Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.

134. The Hour of Twilight

WHEN the unquiet hours depart

And far away their tumults cease,

Within the twilight of the heart

We bathe in peace, are stilled with peace.

The fire that slew us through the day

For angry deed or sin of sense

Now is the star and homeward ray

To us who bow in penitence.

We kiss the lips of bygone pain

And find a secret sweet in them:

The thorns once dripped with shadowy rain

Are bright upon each diadem.

Ceases the old pathetic strife,

The struggle with the scarlet sin:

The mad enchanted laugh of life

Tempts not the soul that sees within.

No riotous and fairy song

Allures the prodigals who bow

Within the home of law, and throng

Before the mystic Father now,

Where faces of the elder years,

High souls absolved from grief and sin,

Leaning from out ancestral spheres

Beckon the wounded spirit in.