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. 27. Though I Thy Mithridates Were
2. Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba
3. Chamber Music. 20. In the Dark Pine-Wood
4. Chamber Music. 14. My Dove, My Beautiful One
5. Chamber Music. 33. Now, O Now, in This Brown Land

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