The Bread of Angels

by Edith Wharton

　　The after-birth of midnight, when life's face

　　Turns to the wall and the last lamp goes out

　　Before the incipient irony of dawn --

　　In that obliterate interval of time

　　Between the oil's last flicker and the first

　　Reluctant shudder of averted day,

　　Threading the city's streets (like mine own ghost

　　Wakening the echoes of dispeopled dreams),

　　I smiled to see how the last light that fought

　　Extinction was the old familiar glare

　　Of supper tables under gas-lit ceilings,

　　The same old stale monotonous carouse

　　Of greed and surfeit nodding face to face

　　O'er the picked bones of pleasure . . .

　　So that the city seemed, at that waste hour,

　　Like some expiring planet from whose face

　　All nobler life had perished -- love and hate,

　　And labor and the ecstasy of thought --

　　Leaving the eyeless creatures of the ooze,

　　Dull offspring of its first inchoate birth,

　　The last to cling to its exhausted breast.

　　And threading thus the aimless streets that strayed

　　Conjectural through a labyrinth of death,

　　Strangely I came upon two hooded nuns,

　　Hands in their sleeves, heads bent as if beneath

　　Some weight of benediction, gliding by

　　Punctual as shadows that perform their round

　　Upon the inveterate bidding of the sun

　　Again and yet again their ordered course

　　At the same hour crossed mine: obedient shades

　　Cast by some high-orbed pity on the waste

　　Of midnight evil! and my wondering thoughts

　　Tracked them from the hushed convent where there kin

　　Lay hived in sweetness of their prayer built cells.

　　What wind of fate had loosed them from the lee

　　Of that dear anchorage where their sisters slept?

　　On what emprise of heavenly piracy

　　Did such frail craft put forth upon this world;

　　In what incalculable currents caught

　　And swept beyond the signal-lights of home

　　Did their white coifs set sail against the night?

　　At last, upon my wonder drawn, I followed

　　The secret wanderers till I saw them pause

　　Before the dying glare of those tall panes

　　Where greed and surfeit nodded face to face

　　O'er the picked bones of pleasure . . .

　　And the door opened and the nuns went in.

　　Again I met them, followed them again.

　　Straight as a thought of mercy to its goal

　　To the same door they sped. I stood alone.

　　And suddenly the silent city shook

　　With inarticulate clamor of gagged lips,

　　As in Jerusalem when the veil was rent

　　And the dead drove the living from the streets.

　　And all about me stalked the shrouded dead,

　　Dead hopes, dead efforts, loves and sorrows dead,

　　With empty orbits groping for their dead

　　In that blind mustering of murdered faiths . . .

　　And the door opened and the nuns came out.

　　I turned and followed. Once again we came

　　To such a threshold, such a door received them,

　　They vanished, and I waited. The grim round

　　Ceased only when the festal panes grew dark

　　And the last door had shot its tardy bolt.

　　"Too late!" I heard one murmur; and "Too late!"

　　The other, in unholy antiphon.

　　And with dejected steps they turned away.

　　They turned, and still I tracked them, till they bent

　　Under the lee of a calm convent wall

　　Bounding a quiet street. I knew the street,

　　One of those village byways strangely trapped

　　In the city's meshes, where at loudest noon

　　The silence spreads like moss beneath the foot,

　　And all the tumult of the town becomes

　　Idle as Ocean's fury in a shell.

　　Silent at noon -- but now, at this void hour,

　　When the blank sky hung over the blank streets

　　Clear as a mirror held above dead lips,

　　Came footfalls, and a thronging of dim shapes

　　About the convent door: a suppliant line

　　Of pallid figures, ghosts of happier folk,

　　Moving in some gray underworld of want

　　On which the sun of plenty never dawns.

　　And as the nuns approached I saw the throng

　　Pale emanation of that outcast hour,

　　Divide like vapor when the sun breaks through

　　And take the glory on its tattered edge.

　　For so a brightness ran from face to face,

　　Faint as a diver's light beneath the sea

　　And as a wave draws up the beach, the crowd

　　Drew to the nuns.

　　I waited. Then those two

　　Strange pilgrims of the sanctuaries of sin

　　Brought from beneath their large conniving cloaks

　　Two hidden baskets brimming with rich store

　　Of broken viands -- pasties, jellies, meats,

　　Crumbs of Belshazzar's table, evil waste

　　Of that interminable nightly feast

　　Of greed and surfeit, nodding face to face

　　O'er the picked bones of pleasure . . .

　　And piteous hands were stretched to take the bread

　　Of this strange sacrament -- this manna brought

　　Out of the antique wilderness of sin.

　　Each seized a portion, turning comforted

　　From this new breaking of the elements;

　　And while I watched the mystery of renewal

　　Whereby the dead bones of old sins become

　　The living body of the love of God,

　　It seemed to me that a like change transformed

　　The city's self . . . a little wandering air

　　Ruffled the ivy on the convent wall;

　　A bird piped doubtfully; the dawn replied;

　　And in that ancient gray necropolis

　　Somewhere a child awoke and took the breast.