Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SAN MICHELE DI PAGANA, by ANNE GOODWIN WINSLOW


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SAN MICHELE DI PAGANA, by                    
First Line: Why light your candles on a day like this
Last Line: His sins all unforgiven!
Subject(s): Religion; Saints; Theology


Why light your candles on a day like this,
The sunshine being what it is
And faith not quite the thing it was before
On the Ligurian shore?

Your restless bells that call again to prayer
With such light voices on so blue an air,
Seem ringing something foreign to the sense
Of mortal penitence;

And solemn angels should not stand like these,
Blowing their trumpets in the olive trees
That grow so intimately near and tall
Beside your tinted wall.

Inside there is the pallid pictured Lord,
And Michael, holding his avenging sword
And a red Lucifer beneath his heel,
But not the eyes that steal

Where those escutcheons that the morning weaves
With trellised clusters and enameled leaves
Are framed in slender ogives opening wide
On all the sea outside.

Ah, little church, set in too fair a place,
Hold fast your spiritual and inward grace,
Lest beauty beating so on every side
With waves unsanctified,

Through deep ablutions that are strange to you
Should fashion man's mysterious soul anew
And get him in a shorter way to heaven,
His sins all unforgiven!





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