Maddalena's confession.
43
The vacant space were legible to her gazing.
Then my fair haughty mother cowered for fear,
My father's gay lips whitened.
There are some
Still in these cloisters who remember well
An angel on whose lip meek mortal prayer
Had changed to saintly praise. For week on week,
The searching lamp of the confessional
Shining athwart the fair page of her soul
Showed blot nor blur. They say her Heaven-linked voice
Chanting, the Gloria outsped the choir
So far, the calm-browed nuns, uplifting eyes
Dim with the haze of revery, made her notes
A golden ladder where their souls went up
Into God's presence; and 'twas whispered low,
That when, all through the midnight, from the toll
Of the last Angelus to the hour of prime,
She knelt before the Sacrament, a sound
Of voices pierced the silence. Then, perchance,
The wakeful guardian stationed at her side
Revealed himself.
Then my fair haughty mother cowered for fear,
My father's gay lips whitened.
There are some
Still in these cloisters who remember well
An angel on whose lip meek mortal prayer
Had changed to saintly praise. For week on week,
The searching lamp of the confessional
Shining athwart the fair page of her soul
Showed blot nor blur. They say her Heaven-linked voice
Chanting, the Gloria outsped the choir
So far, the calm-browed nuns, uplifting eyes
Dim with the haze of revery, made her notes
A golden ladder where their souls went up
Into God's presence; and 'twas whispered low,
That when, all through the midnight, from the toll
Of the last Angelus to the hour of prime,
She knelt before the Sacrament, a sound
Of voices pierced the silence. Then, perchance,
The wakeful guardian stationed at her side
Revealed himself.
