“Amends” begins with what might be read as a subtle allusion to Act 5, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice. In this scene, Lorenzo and Jessica are talking outside at night. Lorenzo comments on the moonlight (“The moon shines bright,” he says), and then attempts to seduce Jessica by describing various classical romantic scenes that have occurred “[i]n such a night as this.”
Jessica, however, seems skeptical of Lorenzo. In her reply, she mentions other, less happy things that have occurred “[i]n such a night,” and finally remarks that despite Lorenzo’s “many vows of faith,” there was “ne’er a true one”—in other words, she recognizes him as basically untrustworthy.
“Amends” does not quote the play exactly—the opening phrase is “Nights like this,” instead of the Shakespearean “In such a night”—but the fact that the poem goes on to describe the moonlight reinforces the allusion. This allusion is important to the poem’s meaning and can be read in several ways.
First, from the outset, the poem brings up classical associations with the moon and moonlight. In fact, within the scene of the play, Lorenzo brings up these associations; he attempts to convince Jessica that this night could be a romantic one for them, because moonlight has traditionally been connected to romance in the past. Yet just as importantly, Jessica resists this interpretation of the night and the moonlight. She seems, over the course of the scene, increasingly skeptical of Lorenzo and the clichéd associations he tries to invoke.
The poem, then, brings up traditional ways the moon has been viewed. But it also implicitly invokes Jessica’s skepticism in response to these traditional views. In a way, after the white space of the caesura in line 1, the rest of the poem could be read as a kind of reply to Lorenzo, or even a reply to traditional ways of viewing the moon altogether. The allusion within the poem, then, establishes a cultural framework for the speaker’s descriptions of the moonlight, but also resists this cultural framework, asking the reader to reconsider whatever assumptions they might bring to the poem.