Your soul is like a painter's landscape where <br />charming masks in shepherd mummeries <br />are playing lutes and dancing with an air <br />of being sad in their fantastic guise. <br />Even while they sing, all in a minor key, <br />of love triumphant and life's careless boon, <br />they seem in doubt of their felicity, <br />their song melts in the calm light of the moon, <br />the lovely melancholy light that sets <br />the little birds to dreaming in the tree <br />and among the statues makes the jets <br />of slender fountains sob with ecstasy. <br /> <br /> <br />(translated by C. F. MacIntyre)<br /><br />Paul Verlaine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/moonlight-16/
