dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Florence Kilpatrick Mixter

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Sanctuary

Florence Kilpatrick Mixter

HOW is it faith outstrips the doubting word,

Leaving the skeptic brain in overthrow—

And, swift as arrow from the archer’s bow,

Flies up, and ever upward, like a bird?

Today the heavy mists of doubt are stirred

By distant currents, winds that softly blow;

As if a promise given long ago

Were faintly whispered and as faintly heard.

I sometimes think that high above Earth’s dome

Our hopes from turret to dream-turret soar,

And like gray pigeons build their nests and mate.

There Beauty harbors them when they turn home

From their wide circling, and forevermore

Their sanctuary is inviolate.