night-ciris

The stars never rise in a midnight sky Of a cloudless expanse hollow and deep; No shining hopes are born to burn and die A thousand thousand voices softly sigh Into collapsed pillows in dreamless sleep: The stars never rise in a midnight sky The ancient child has shut his blazing eye And sees no cause for him to laugh or weep, No shining hopes are born to burn and die Now the cosmic axis falls from on high: The stars plunge headlong in a downward sweep, The stars never rise in a midnight sky The eternal fires have fallen and lie In death, their mortal bodies in a heap No shining hopes are born to burn and die The earth preserve

The warmth of woman in silent repose Is borrowed from a single candle's flame That banishes the gloom and floods her pose Of beggared queens with light of saintly fame; No crown nestles in gentle waves of loose hair Swept over long-suffering shoulders, bent Beneath the weight of penitential prayer Silently sung in a sinner's lament; Yet now what Spirit moves within her soul And settles near His deeply grieving love Soothing old hurts, making gaping wounds whole As she cleaves to him like a hand its glove; What tender lovers they who meet at night Not speaking but known by the candle light.

She the crown of Arcadia shudders, he the fury of flaring sun;    As waves in hollow darkness rise and roar    One on another, they the tempest on storm-tossed seas as never before Raged two who rent the earth in bold-beaten run; Yet theirs, like every manly passion burnt and done    Self-spent in cinder-falls in search of more    Loses the alluring luster, dulls and comes to bore Faithless love in endless cycles finished once begun

The good wife rose at dawn today And swiftly went to bake the bread The household slept, the sky was gray But she at work bent her noble head, Quietly kneading to see her family fed. In every still and solemn morning hour There she stands sifting the day's flour.

The new day dawns and your eye rises in the west Red and burning to swallow the sun The great star rages and in violent death Sears your brow and spears your breast; O look at what your crime has wrought Look what burns above black clouds of hair   An angry star in glory shines,   A golden crown triumphs there The old days fade and bleed into a crimson sky The girdle of the cosmos unbound For the blasphemous nimbus of savage light Names you falsely deified; O look what shame your pride has bought Look to the star that you would forsake   For by the light upon your brow   Will your sainted halo break