A Midsummer's Night

Oh the moon is in love with the sun and his rays,
Reflecting the beauty and passage of days,
Returning the light to the dark, torrid land,
And plying the wheat with a silver-toned hand.
The partridge lies, soft-chested, warm, in the brush
And the world is asleep with the bed of the thrush;
The only brief movement, a dot on the meadow:
A doe and her fawn part of silence and shadow.
The scent of the hay from a broken-down barn
Sweeps, hushed in the wind, through the forests forlorn,
And the stars cast a sheen on the brook's sandy bay
While the golden-etched herons play water ballet.
The fiddles of insects are lost in the breeze,
The imprint of wolves press the ground to a frieze,
And the moon, like a novel, seems bound with the word
Of the almighty sun and its shimmering cord.