– 32 –

Cloudy Night

The heavenly vault, to-night, is a structure of massed clouds
Irradiated by the hid light of the mid-September moon;
A marble and alabaster forecourt of the Lord’s House,
Its pillared convolutions sculptured by a seraph’s tool.

(No night there, spake the rapt visionary,
No need of sun, neither of moon to lighten it;
The glory of God, he said, did lighten it.
And the Lamb, the Lamb of God, is the light thereof.)

So sleep I now, for ultimate infinitude,
As my heart’s core thy candle lighteneth;
With thine effulgence, Lord, thou showest interfused
The mysterious, cloudy architecture of life and death.