Dreaming.

Kuindshi, Moon Spots in Forest, Winter, 1908

Your soul is like a landscape fantasy,

Where masks and Bergamasks, in charming wise,

Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be

Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise.

Singing in minor mode of life’s largesse

And all-victorious love, they yet seem quite

Reluctant to believe their happiness,

And their song mingles with the pale moonlight,

The calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty, beaming,

Sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees,

And makes the marbled fountains, gushing, streaming—

Slender jet-fountains—sob their ecstasies

Paul Verlaine