The Seventeenth Night

The Seventeenth Night

The seventeenth night; the moon rose slow, 

As though the sky could scarcely bear 

So round a light, so deep a glow, 

That gilded dusk and lingered there.

I stopped, then stopped again beneath its light, 

Each pause outlasting the last; 

The clouds were brushed with amber, soft and bright, 

And all the hour was gilded as it passed.

So distant it seemed, so hardly true, 

That I could name but one word for its grace: 

Sophisticated — yet that word withdrew 

Before the beauty it could never trace.

And if the moon could speak, its voice would be 

As quiet as my looking back at thee.