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. |