Charm with your stainlessness these winter nights,

Skies, and be perfect! Fly vivider in the fiery dark, you quiet meteors,

And disappear.

You moon, be slow to go down,

This is your full!



The four white roads make off in silence

Towards the four parts of the starry universe.

Time falls like manna at the corners of the wintry earth.

We have become more humble than the rocks,

More wakeful than the patient hills.



Charm with your stainlessness these nights in Advent,

holy spheres,

While minds, as meek as beasts,

Stay close at home in the sweet hay;

And intellects are quieter than the flocks that feed by starlight.



Oh pour your darkness and your brightness over all our

solemn valleys,

You skies: and travel like the gentle Virgin,

Toward the planets' stately setting,



Oh white full moon as quiet as Bethlehem!



Thomas Merton, Advent.



Thomas Merton died in Bangkok on this date in 1968 at the age of 53.



Today is also the anniversary of the beginning of Merton's Trappist journey, his entrance in 1941 to the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani.