Songs and Sonnets (Coleman)/Millet's Angelus

by Helena Jane Coleman

MILLET'S ANGELUS.

 

Enveloped by the sunset's crimson glow,
That all the dreaming landscape glorifies,
The peasants wait, while softly swells and dies
Across the furrowed fields the Angelus low;
Earth-stained and worn with toil, how should they know
What loveliness around and in them lies—
Seen with the passion of a painter's eyes,
Who once divined and fixed it long ago?

To me, beholding, comes the quickening thought
That we so close to earth, bowed with the stress
Of daily toil and hopes that come to naught—
Our senses dulled with grieving—hardly guess
What meaning from it all might not be wrought
To beauty by some higher consciousness.