Act 5 — THE BRIGHT NEW MOON OF LOVE.

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BY T. HOLLEY CHIVERS, M. D.

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At the dawn she stood debating

With the angels at the door

Of Christ’s sepulchre, in waiting

For his body evermore.

Pure as white-robed Faith to Sorrow,

Pointing back to Heaven above—

(Happy Day for every Morrow)—

Was the Bright New Moon of Love.

Nun-like, chaste in her devotion,

All the stars in heaven on high,

With their radiant, rhythmic motion,

Chimed in with her from the sky.

Sweeter far than day when breaking,

Angel-like, in heaven above,

On the traveler lost, when waking,

Was the Bright New Moon of Love.

Thus she glorified all sweetness

With the angel-light she shed

From her soul in such completeness,

That she beautified the dead.

When an angel, sent on duty

From his Father’s throne above,

Saw the heaven-surpassing beauty

Of this Bright New Moon of Love.

For the Truth she loved was Beauty,

Because Beauty was her Truth;

And to love her was his duty,

Such as Boas owed to Ruth.

God had set his seal upon her,

Her divinity to prove,

And this angel wooed her—won her—

Won the Bright New Moon of Love.

Thus the Mission of True Woman

She did act out in this life—

Showed the Divine in the Human,

In her duties of the Wife.

For the Heaven that he had taken

Was so much like that above,

That the heaven he had forsaken

Was the Bright New Moon of Love.

For the kingdom of Christ’s glory,

Angel-chanted at her birth,

Is the theme now of the story

Which I warble through the earth.

And because this fallen angel

Took her home to heaven above,

I now write this New Evangel

Of the Bright New Moon of Love.