By The Light Of The Moon

There is one painting in the gallery that I know of-
Well, in truth, many that I know, but only one I love.
It was made by a master's hand;
It shows a starlit, darkened land,
With the cold round of the full moon coming in above.

It seems the colors in the painting are black, white, and gray.
But only stare, and do not move; and the eye begins to play,
To cast shadows into gloom
Of deepest black, and to make room
For the silver and the green and others, brilliant as in day.

The silver in bolts of argent cloth from the full moon falls,
And touches the snow of the clearing, and wide open rolls,
Making the snow like diamonds glitter,
Rousing cold birds to sing and twitter,
Making one feel as in the night when in the woods a jay calls.

The green is the buds on the trees, tightly tucked and still,
But indicating it is early spring, and soon the warmth will rill
The ice down the boles of trees
That now stand black in the freeze,
And make them shake and open their leaves, winter cold to kill.

The other colors are immersed in the paint, hardly here or there.
One might catch, if one looks quickly, a flash of sun-bright hair.
One might see eyes the blue of ice,
Staring from the frozen paradise,
And that one saw a woman dancing in the clearing one would swear.

I have seen her sometimes in the painting, capering, myself;
She is a fairy treasure, skin as silver as if from moon-shelf
She fell down onto the earth.
Her face is full of perfect mirth,
Her flying body and flying feet light as those of an elf.

But blink or look away, and then return your stare,
And she has faded into the foreground, with her sun-bright hair.
It seems odd that, in the snow,
Such a bright one could turn and go;
That one could see and then not see a dancing woman there.

For myself, I stand often before that painting that I love,
And wonder and dream about what the painter knew of:
What made his mind in a fairy swoon
Fall one night by the light of the moon,
What made him paint the woman dancing, with the moon above.