Two sonnets

Here are two poems previously written in quatrains which, for various reasons, I have rewritten as sonnets.

Shards of Light.

Approaching night led me darkly down

Labyrinthine corridors, through countless doors

To ones long unopened, near forgotten,

And there in strange anxiety pause.

Some doors were old, their hinges rusty,

I had to push and shove and prise

At lock, handle and heavy weight

Before they creaked open before my eyes.

O strange paradox that blackness reveals!

How out of darkness shine shards of light;

Shards - friendship, family, faith and love-

More clearly discernible in the night.

O shards of light! Darkness reveals your shine!

Shards of light richly sustaining this life of mine!

A dew drop before the rising sun

This life is brief, a breath, a vapour,

A dew drop before the rising sun,

A fleeting appearing of the mist,

Disappearing before it has hardly begun.

For a moment in the shining sun

The refracting light will sparkle and dance;

Then before the rising heat

It disappears into the sky’s expanse.

But what is that insistent music

From the velvet, star studded sky?

Do the stars sing of an eternal power?

Is a personal God enthroned on high?

The body groans in sad mortality.

Can the mind hope for vast eternity?