Well, both are poetic and both make poetic sense, if sense is needed, but the question here is which is accurate to what CAS intended? I'd like to know. While I think either work well and neither diminish the poem significantly, yet, if this is a typo, then it is quite a major one as it does influence any interpretation that the poor reader may make.
I initially favoured moon-warm purely for romantic reasons. And the more I think about it the more I think moon-warm is correct. Firstly, the moon's tidal influence does somehow compliment the sea imagery. But more so, this is a poem about sex, right?! It is full of suggestive imagery and I think the clue is in the rest of the line: "
loops of noon-warm
hair" - I'm not convinced that CAS is talking about the curly hairs on her head and it could refer to a certain monthly cycle...
Also, forgive me if they seem very obvious, but my knowledge of archaic vocabulary is sadly limited and I'm also only an occasional reader of poetry, so I suggest this with an amount of caution: I asked myself what does CAS mean by "yerd" here? I assumed it meant yard, simply because it sounds similar... But I started to wonder if it could possibly mean head because it follows "nodding," but head doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the line and I can find no reference to yerd meaning head in my Googling, so I'm discounting this. Apparently it can also be a Scottish word for earth, but that makes little "sense" to my mind in context to the poem. So I assume I'm right with my original reading, that CAS means yerd as in yard? Which suggests this is another one of the poems many double entendre... Which I think also might support the moon-warm hypothesis?
Just for convenience, here's the poem in full, with noon instead of moon:
Quote:CAS
As the fierce faun, on the cypress-bearded cape,
Desires the sea-girl, seen with billow-drifted
Hair the color of kelp and shadowy-rifted
Vulva that only knows the slow sea’s rape,
And vainly stares, till the fair, unfondled nape
Goes down to ocean’s coral-crofted valleys:
Then, in a daylong dream, he swings and dallies
Through the close gulfs about her swirling shape
And turns not when familiar dryads come
To tickle his bowed neck with sharpening tips
Of laughter-lifted bosoms, or to snare
His nodding yerd with loops of noon-warm hair:—
Thus, Lais, am I fain for masterdom
Upon thy flown unparted thighs and lips.