The Eve of St. Mark - a poem by Geoffrey Hill

 
As today is the feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist, I present you with the sonnet 'The Eve of St Mark' by Geoffrey Hill. The sonnet is the twelfth and penultimate part of the cycle 'An apology for the revival of Christian architecture in England', whose title is taken from an architectural treatise by Augustus Welby Pugin, published in 1843. A digitised copy of the book can be found here. The sonnet cycle was published in Hill's poetry collection Tenebrae from 1979, and the entire cycle is available at poetryfoundation.org.


The Eve of St Mark 

Stroke the small silk with your whispering hands,
godmother; nod and nod from the half-gloom;
broochlight intermittent between the fronds,
the owl immortal in its crystal dome.

Along the mantelpiece veined lustres trill,
the clock discounts us with a telling chime.
Familiar ministrants, clerks-of-appeal,
burnish upon the threshold of the dream:

churchwardens in wing-collars bearing scrolls
of copyhold well-tinctured and well-tied.
Your photo-albums loved by the boy-king

preserve in sepia waterglass the souls
 of distant cousins, virgin till they died,
and the lost delicate suitors who could sing.