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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
CONVENT CEMETERY: MOUNT CARMEL, by MARY SAINT VIRGINIA
First Line: Twilight: and pine trees keep the blessed enclosure
Last Line: Night will be good; and morning will be better.
Alternate Author Name(s): Berry, Virginia
Subject(s): Cemeteries; Convents; Graveyards
First Line: Twilight: and pine trees keep the blessed enclosure
Last Line: Night will be good; and morning will be better.
Alternate Author Name(s): Berry, Virginia
Subject(s): Cemeteries; Convents; Graveyards
Twilight: and pine trees keep the blessed enclosure,
Transpose the secular breeze to Compline, hush
The garden to the ultimate composure,
Bar out the alien day, cloister the thrush,
Guard the Great Silence's unyielding grating
While maiden bodies -- each within a cell
Whose solitude is a native land -- are waiting
Through the long vigil for the rising bell.
An interlude composed for nuns the night
Immuring, in the shadows above the river,
The brow that crumbles -- granting time's last fetter --
Beneath familiar crucifix and white
And maiden mother close to Christ forever. . . .
Night will be good; and Morning will be better.
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