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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

COMPLINE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: We are resting here in the twilight
Last Line: That trembles only when the heart trembles.
Alternate Author Name(s): Scott, D. C.


We are resting here in the twilight,
Watching the progress of a cloudless sunset,
The colour moving away from yellow to a deeper gold.
High on the hillside
Across the sunset the telegraph wires are drawn,
Black on the yellow.
Upward we look through the strands
To the delicate colour infinitely beyond
At the world's end.

The swallows flash in the air
And light on the wires,
They range themselves there
Side by side in lines,
Forming impromptu designs,
Black on the yellow.
An odour rises out of the earth
From dead grass cooling in the dew,
From the fragrance of pine needles
That smouldered all day in the heat.

Love in our hearts is quiet,
Tranquil as light reflected in water
That trembles only when the water trembles.
As gold ages to ivory,
As up from a hidden source there wells
The fragile colour of deep-sea shells,
Ivory is flushed with rose
At the day's close.
And as the present sometimes calls up the past
I see the wires as the old music-staff,
Four lines and three spaces,
The swallows clinging there,
The notes of an ancient air,
The sunset glow -- a vellum page
In an old Mass book: --
A vellum page yellow as old ivory,
The fading gems of a rose-window,
The odour of incense --
And a voice out of the past
Imploring in a vault of shadow --

Sancta Maria -- Mater Dei
Ora pro nobis peccatoribus
Nunc et in hora
Mortis nostrae.
The golden melody of an old faith
Lingering ethereal in the shadow,
The prayer of the past --
Ora pro nobis.

Pray for us, you swallows,
Now and in the hour of our death;
Now when we are fulfilled in the promise of life
When love is quiet in the heart;
And when we fall like autumn leaves and their shadows;
The colour of the leaves, -- the garnered beauty of life, --
With their shadows on the future,
Falling together to the unknown --
Ora pro nobis.
May we remember then of all life's loveliest things,
This evening and the swallows' wings,
When infinite love was reflected in the heart
And trembled only when the heart trembled.

We will pray for you, bright swallows,
Now and in the hour of your death;
Now when you fly aloft in the dry air
Rushing together in a storm of wings,
Grasping the wires;
And when you fall secretly in the wilderness,
Where, -- none knoweth --
Ora pro nobis.
May you remember then this northern beauty,
The pure lake surface,
And after a long light-day,
Wing-weary, the rest
Of a night by the nestlings and the nest.

The sunset failed in ivory and rose,
All that is left of light is the early moonlight
That trembles in the lake-water
Only when the water trembles;
And the lustre of life alone is left at the long day's close, --
The radiance of love in the heart
That trembles only when the heart trembles.





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