Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PIOUS EVENINGS, by EMILE VERHAEREN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PIOUS EVENINGS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: To farthest off the sun at setting sheds
Last Line: Of which we cannot see the towering stem.
Subject(s): Calm; Evening; Silence; Placid; Undisturbed; Tranquility; Sunset; Twilight


To farthest off the sun at setting sheds
The haircloth of its silence and its calm;
On Byzantine backgrounds carefully it spreads
All things as clearly as a quiet psalm.

The downpour slashed the air with blades of hail
And now the heavens shine like a sanctuary;
It is the hour when the western fires fail,
When the day's gold and the twilight's silver vary.

Nothing stirs on the horizon, unless it be
An infinite giant march of oaks in the gloom,
Stretching beyond the farms one just can see,
Along the fallow fields and the corners of broom.

The trees move on—as mortuary friars
Pass by, and twilight weighs upon their bands,
As the long troop of penitents aspires
On pilgrimage to ancient holy lands.

And as the road leads upward to the sky,
Where the setting sun far peony petals strews,
To see those long bare trees, to see those monks pass by,
You'd say they were setting out tonight, by twos,

Toward their God who fills the heavens with sprinkled gold;
And the stars, gleaming high ahead of them,
Are each the light of a candle that they hold
Of which we cannot see the towering stem.





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