Bright Harvest by Grace Noll Crowell - HTML preview

Trappist Monastery

S

HARP and clear on the air a silver singing

Sounds where a sunset bell peals out the

hour.

The monastery, clinging to the hillside,

Sends forth a call from its vine-shrouded tower:

A bright insistent voicing to the faithful,

A call to prayer from rim to valley’s rim,

Acknowledging the power and the glory

Of the Blessed One . . . and now the light grows

dim,

And the shaken air has suddenly ceased throbbing.

The little winds across the world are sweet—

Inside the monastery’s darkened cloisters

There is a silence, utter and complete,

Where the uncommunicative monks are kneeling

In contemplation and in earnest prayer—

Surely if one but listen—one can hear it:

The footsteps of the Eternal moving there.

˙77˙