Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE BLACK NUN, by WINIFRED WELLES



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE BLACK NUN, by                    
First Line: Her part at vespers was to light each candle
Last Line: Spattered the loftiest saint with drops of gold.
Alternate Author Name(s): Shearer, Harold H., Mrs.
Subject(s): Nuns


Her part at vespers was to light each candle --
A wick herself in those black robes, she came,
Lonely and dark across the dusk to handle
These beads, which were God's rosary of flame.
Like a great moth, her shadow, melancholy,
Wounded, blind, fluttered along the stone
Close to the candles' Holy! Holy! Holy!
As each tiny tongue rang out in silvery tone.

Once only did her waxen fingers falter
In their scattering of sparks across this space;
One time she paused to stare beyond the altar
Into the niche where Magdalen's white face,
Bedevilled with the shadows, nodded to her to listen
To a statue's lips that mocked her where she stood,
With half the chancel dark and half aglisten,
Still as a figure carven of charred wood.

Darkness softer than this, more richly embered,
With fire enough in her ten fingertips
To candle whole cathedrals, she remembered --
And that faint shadow from the marble lips
Of Magdalen slid, flickering, to hers; her lashes,
Closed on the tapers, as against cool tears,
Were singed by eyes, that, from her face of ashes,
Leapt up as hotly as the points of spears.

Her sleeve need not have wavered, she was jagged
With her own stabbing breath, long before the claws
Of candles caught her robes and made them ragged --
This was the veil twice-taken; such a gauze,
As to a sombre nun is seldom given,
Twisted her body in its rustling fold;
This, her last candle lit to God in Heaven,
Spattered the loftiest saint with drops of gold.





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