The Conversion of a Young Man in England: 1854

by Marvin Payne

he came upon the meeting in the grove

among the leaning

green and golden oaks.

without a cloudless vision of the why

he came, and waited

in a thinning dawn—

and others like himself, he reckoned, came

and listened, taut,

beside him in the oaks,

while dawn began to thin like parting fog

among the leaves

and in the way of sky.

along the warming ground the sound arose

of waiting, like

arousing bees—young wind

sang on the warm as lark calls, thinned and drawn.

the panes of sky

went soft, and then the sun

fell dappled on the words the elder said

among the leaning

green and golden oaks.