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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


TO MICHAL: SONNETS AFTER MARRIAGE: 4. ON HER SINGING THE GLORIA by CHARLES WILLIAMS

First Line: CAN THAT SMALL VOICE ASSAULT THE EMBANDED SKIES
Last Line: POISED, WHILE THE DAWN WITHIN HER EAST WAS GREY.
Subject(s): MARRIAGE; SINGING & SINGERS; WEDDINGS; HUSBANDS; WIVES;

CAN that small voice assault the embanded skies
Or, as the light air at your mouth is stirred,
Moves all the poised creation, with the word
Shaken and shaken with remote replies?
All as a mist forms and dissolves and flies
Before the coming—O too long deferred!—
Of that which afar the incantation heard
And passed through worlds to answer. In such wise
When your great sister, found on earth alone
Mighty to speak the Tetragrammaton,
Breathed forth the @3Yod@1 and closed upon the @3He@1,
Deep in her spirit, low and small and far,
She saw the archangel like the morning star
Poised, while the Dawn within her east was grey.



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