The Adoration
Now, like withdrawing music
Where pillared aisles implore,
You are a vanished choir,
A soft-closed door.
Victorious voices blended
Fade, and I kneel still-hearted.
Sudden my life is ended.
We have parted.
Lost in the vault’s vast splendor
My ghost goes rising, thinning.
Can heartbreak be an end, or
Some strange beginning?
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 24, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“The Adoration” appeared in William Rose Benét’s third book, Perpetual Light: A Memorial (Yale University Press, 1919), written after the death of his first wife, Teresa Frances Thompson. In his forward to the collection, Benét writes, “Poetry is unconscionable because it follows true conscience. I knew, in her, that conscience,—and know it in these fantastic shadows cast by her light. If you do also, be assured that the light still shines—forever.”
William Rose Benét
William Rose Benét was a poet, editor, critic, anthologist, translator, and children’s book author. He was born on February 2, 1886, in Brooklyn, New York. Benét wrote, edited, and collaborated on more than thirty books between 1915 and 1950. A cofounder of the Saturday Review of Literature,he was best known for his column “The Phoenix Nest,” published from 1924 to 1950. Benét was on the Academy of American Poets’ original Board of Chancellors, serving from 1946 to 1950. He died in New York City on May 4, 1950.