Marjorie Allen Seiffert

NIGHT stands in the valley.

Her head

Is bound with stars,

While Dawn, a grey-eyed nun,

Steals through the silent trees.

Behind the mountains

Morning shouts and sings

And dances upward.

Down the eastern sky

A fleet of clouds drift toward the earth

Bearing a message of forgotten beauty.

Only the brooding mountains,

With robes of purple mist about their shoulders,

Can gaze into the glory

Of the sun.

III

The peaks, even today, show finger-prints

Where God last touched the earth,

Before he set it joyously in space

Finding it good.

You, slender, shining—

You, downward leaping—

Born from silent snow

To drown at last in the blue, silent

Mountain lake—

You are not snow or water,

You are only a silver spirit

Singing.

Sharp crags of granite

Pointing—threatening—

Thrust fiercely at me;

And near the edge their menace

Would whirl me down.

Climbing desperately toward the heights

I glance in terror behind me,

To be deafened—to be shattered—

By a thunderbolt of beauty.

VII

The mountains hold communion:

They are priests, silent and austere;

They have come together

In a secret place

With unbowed heads.

VIII

This hidden lake

Is a sapphire cup—

An offering clearer than wine,

Colder than tears.

The mountains hold it toward the sky

In silence.

Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD