Mystic Trees :: :: University of Virginia Library

As often as I prayed
There rose upon my heart a moon
Most beautiful,
And at the full,
Save for one hollow in its face that specked.
I prayed God bring it to perfection soon!

For burthen of two years
I bore that moon of ragged face
In prayer profound
To make it round;
It came to me each time I said my prayers;
And I watched on and wished the vision from its place.

I thought “A Demon's mask!”
—In terror at the spectre swooned:
More firm it stood
In flesh and blood,
More piteous for the one thing it lacked:
The hollow of its substance fixed me as a wound.

At last God came to me
And spoke, “The moon that doth so fright
Thee to behold,
Consider bold!
It is the figure of My Church, and thou
Art chosen to make full its glorious light.”

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Then, humbly as a child
Caresses for a birthday feast,
He bade me pray
Whole holiday
For worship of the Blessed Sacrament—
“Go, Juliana, go; entreat for Me the priest.

Tell all the world My will
Is that this Feast be made.” He saw
My love how scant—
“A thing I want”;
He said, “And of thy proffered faith. How long
Wilt thou that I abide in My fair Church this flaw?”

Father, for twenty years
I have kept back this broken toy,
Given me to mend.
To comprehend
How I could bear these tidings to the world
Was for my energies too mighty an employ.

Still did that moon persist:
The famine and the hollow there
Maddened my will!
How could I fill
The abyss with gold, I in my poverty?
If I besought this boon would not the people stare?

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It seemed God had forgot:
He did not press me any more.
The world I felt
Hungered, and knelt,
And kneels—I utter in your ears the words
I should have uttered twenty years before.