In just three short lines, the poem sets a cold, strange scene. The moon is caught in the branches of a tree, a bright silver shape that looks almost like something hung or stuck there. Beneath it, old men stare out at what the poem calls "an uneasy void," an emptiness that unsettles them rather than soothes them.
The last line is the oddest and most interesting. "Moonshine" is the title, and it can mean both moonlight and illegal liquor. Here the moonshine is "dry," so it offers no drink, no warmth, no relief. That small twist suggests the men are looking for comfort or meaning and finding none. The poem doesn't say what they feel, but the word "uneasy" colors everything.
The mood is quiet, bleak and a little eerie. The scene is beautiful on the surface, yet it carries a sense of age, emptiness and longing that nothing in the night can satisfy.