MIDSUMMER MOONLIGHT 115 



morose and melancholy. Its light drowns all 

 these in a deep sea of peace. 



As the moon came up, gibbous and glowing, its 

 beams seemed to skim into the darkness under the 

 pines as a swallow flies, scaling along beneath 

 the blackness of close-set plumes above, to light 

 long aisles between the naked boles below. 

 These that had been so invisible before that I had 

 to find my way among them by the friendly lead- 

 ing of the path beneath my feet, now took on a 

 radiance of their own. Green and brown no 

 longer, they glowed with the witchery of the level 

 light, their real colors only shining faintly 

 through this transparent frosting, this veneer of 

 cool fire, till the place was like those European 

 salt caverns of which one reads where the dark 

 roof is upheld by crystalline pillars that give 

 ghostly reflections of the lights that the miners 

 carry. Here, groping in the grotesque glow of 

 their own lanterns might well come the gnomes 

 of German tales although, so sweetly gentle is the 

 light, I can think of them only as kindly goblins 

 bent on quaint deeds of goodness. 



Beyond the pines the path led me moonward 

 through glades among deciduous trees, no doubt 

 the abodes of elves. That may have been but a 



