Poem by James Joyce

Nightpiece

Gaunt in gloom,
The pale stars their torches,
Enshrouded, wave.
Ghostfires from heaven’s far verges faint illume,
Arches on soaring arches,
Night’s sindark nave.

Seraphim,
The lost hosts awaken
To service till
In moonless gloom each lapses muted, dim,
Raised when she has and shaken
Her thurible.

And long and loud,
To night’s nave upsoaring,
A starknell tolls
As the bleak incense surges, cloud on cloud,
Voidward from the adoring
Waste of souls.

1. Chamber Music. 33. Now, O Now, in This Brown Land
2. A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight
3. Chamber Music. 4. When the Shy Star Goes Forth in Heaven
4. Chamber Music. 6. I Would in That Sweet Bosom Be
5. Lament for the Yeomen

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