This light conducts
The thoughts of drunkards, the feelings
Of widows and trembling ladies,
The movements of fishes.
How pleasant an existence it is
That this emerald charms philosophers,
Until they become thoughtlessly willing
To bathe their hearts in later moonlight,
Knowing that they can bring back thought
In the night that is still to be silent,
Reflecting this thing and that,
Before they sleep.
It is better that, as scholars,
They should think hard in the dark cuffs
Of voluminous cloaks,
And shave their heads and bodies.
It might well be that their mistress
Is no gaunt fugitive phantom.
She might, after all, be a wanton,
Stevens offers a conflated image of philosophers like Plato, who sought to strip away the faculties of human perception to get the essence of things (his idea of the “Forms”), and religious philosophers, who sought to deny outright sensual pleasures in an effort to get closer to God. 
 

Homunculus et La Belle Etoile