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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AT TWILIGHT, by                    
First Line: A gentle peaceful gray
Last Line: That knows of neither church nor soul.
Subject(s): Death; Heaven; Soul; Dead, The; Paradise


A gentle peaceful gray
Steals over the sky
And rebukes the sun for his flamboyant gaiety
Until his head sinks beneath the western rim—
A street lamp opens wide its yellow eye—
The staccato stutter of traffic subsides
And is lost
In the uncanny silence
(As of a living thing suddenly touched by death)
That hangs over the earth for one brief moment.

It is that moment
When mankind is wont
To lower its weary arms,
Lift its drooping shoulders,
And listen devoutly
To the clangorous call of a church
Or to the questioning murmurs of its soul.
But this long long line of men,
With snarling bayonets aimed straight at the sky,
Never heed the voice of either.
Stolidly
They march, march, march—
As if they were strange beings
Coming from some alien land
That knows of neither church nor soul.





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