OUR LADY OF THE TWILIGHT

Our Lady of the Twilight

From out the sunset-lands

Comes gently stealing o'er the world

And stretches out her hands,

Over the blotched and broken wall,

The blind and foetid lane,

She stretches out her hands and all

Is beautiful again.

No factory chimneys can defile

The beauty of her dress:

She stoops down with her heavenly smile

To heal and love and bless:

All tortured things, all evil powers,

All shapes of dark distress

Are turned to fragrance and to flowers

Beneath her kind caress.

Our Lady of the Twilight,

She melts our prison-bars!

She makes the sea forget the shore,

She fills the sky with stars,

And stooping over wharf and mill,

Chimney and shed and dome,

Turns them to fairy palaces,

Then calls her children home.

She stoops to bless the stunted tree,

And from the furrowed plain,

And from the wrinkled brow she smooths

The lines of care and pain:

Hers are the gentle hands and eyes

And hers the peaceful breath

That ope, in sunset-softened skies,

The quiet gates of death.

Our Lady of the Twilight,

She hath such gentle hands,

So lovely are the gifts she brings

From out the sunset-lands,

So bountiful, so merciful

So sweet of soul is she;

And over all the world she draws

Her cloak of charity.