He feigned a fine indifference
To be so prodigal of light,
Knowing his piteous twisted things
Would lose the crooked marks of spite
When only moonbeams lit the dusk
And made his wicked world seem right.
But we forget so soon the shame,
Conceiving sweetness if we can,
Heaven the citadel itself
Illumined on the lunar plan;
And I the chief of sinners, I
The middlemost Victorian!
Now I shall ride the misty lake
With my own love, and speak so low
That not a fishy thing shall hear
The secrets passing to and fro
Amid the moonlight poetries.
O moonshine, how unman us so?
This poem is in the public domain, and originally appeared in Poems about God (Henry Holt and Co, 1919).