IN THE ORATORY.THE incense mounted like a cloud,A golden cloud of languid scent;Robed priests before the altar bowed,Expecting the divine event.Then silence, like a prisoner bound,Rose, by a mighty hand set free,And dazzlingly, in shafts of sound,Thundered Beethoven’s Mass in C.She knelt in prayer; large lids sereneLay heavy on the sombre eyes,As though to veil some vision seenUpon the mounts of Paradise.Her dark face, calm as carven stone.The face that twilight shows the day,Brooded, mysteriously alone,And infinitely far away.Inexplicable eyes that drewMine eyes adoring, why from meDemand, new Sphinx, the fatal clueThat seals my doom or conquers thee?
THE incense mounted like a cloud,A golden cloud of languid scent;Robed priests before the altar bowed,Expecting the divine event.
Then silence, like a prisoner bound,Rose, by a mighty hand set free,And dazzlingly, in shafts of sound,Thundered Beethoven’s Mass in C.
She knelt in prayer; large lids sereneLay heavy on the sombre eyes,As though to veil some vision seenUpon the mounts of Paradise.
Her dark face, calm as carven stone.The face that twilight shows the day,Brooded, mysteriously alone,And infinitely far away.
Inexplicable eyes that drewMine eyes adoring, why from meDemand, new Sphinx, the fatal clueThat seals my doom or conquers thee?