V

The Church of Nouveau Monde! Lead on. ’Tis there We concentrate. There hung in the void street A local silence, which our sudden feet With lesser clangour startled in its lair, While, strangely, not the brood that racked the air Could break the boding hush of that retreat. So in a thunder-storm the quickened beat Of one’s own startled pulses may impair The silence of a room which the onfall Of shafted noise o’erhead left deadly still. Perchance the mind doth place as on some plan The figured sounds which figured space do fill, Far or more near. ’Tis sure the hodding van Broke forward into silence virginal.

RASTATT, 29th April