THE incense mounted like a cloud,
A golden cloud of languid scent;
Robed priests before the altar bowed,
Expecting the divine event.

Then silence, like a prisoner bound,
Rose, by a mighty hand set free,
And dazzlingly, in shafts of sound,
Thundered Beethoven’s Mass in C.

She knelt in prayer; large lids serene
Lay heavy on the sombre eyes,
As though to veil some vision seen
Upon the mounts of Paradise.

Her dark face, calm as carven stone.
The face that twilight shows the day,
Brooded, mysteriously alone,
And infinitely far away.

Inexplicable eyes that drew
Mine eyes adoring, why from me
Demand, new Sphinx, the fatal clue
That seals my doom or conquers thee?