The last stanzas of Victor Hugo's ‘Booz endormi' – “Boaz Asleep,” from Selected Poems of Victor Hugo, translated by E.H. and A.M. Blackmore.
(. . .)
All slumbered in Jerimadeth and Ur ;
The stars enameled the deep, somber sky;
Westward a slender crescent shone close by
Those flowers of night, and Ruth, without a stir,
Wondered—with parting eyelids half revealed
Beneath her veils—what stray god, as he cropped
The timeless summer, had so idly dropped
That golden sickle in the starry field. |