Explore "At Vespers" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
High up in the organ-story / A girl stands slim and fair; / And touched with the casement's glory / Gleams out her radiant hair.
The young priest kneels at the altar, / Then lifts the Host above; / And the psalm intoned from the psalter / Is pure with patient love.
A sweet bell chimes; and a censer / Swings gleaming in the gloom; / The candles glimmer and denser / Rolls up the pale perfume.
Then high in the organ choir / A voice of crystal soars, / Of patience and soul's desire, / That suffers and adores.
And out of the altar's dimness / An answering voice doth swell, / Of passion that cries from the grimness / And anguish of its own hell.
High up in the organ-story / One kneels with a girlish grace; / And, touched with the vesper glory, / Lifts her madonna face.
One stands at the cloudy altar, / A form bowed down and thin; / The text of the psalm in the psalter / He reads, is sorrow and sin.