Wedding-Night. (Moods Of Love.)

At night, with shaded eyes, the summer moon
    In tender meditation downward glances
    At the dark earth, far-set in dim expanses,
And, welcomer than blazoned gold of noon,
Down through the air her steady lights are strewn.
    The breezy forests sigh in moonlit trances,
    And the full-hearted poet, waking, fancies
The smiling hills will break in laughter soon.

Oh thus, thou gentle Nature, dost thou shine
    On me to-night. My very limbs would melt,
Like rugged earth beneath yon ray divine,
    Into faint semblance of what they have felt:
Thine eye doth color me, O wife, O mine,
With peace that in thy spirit long hath dwelt!