The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

De Vere, Aubrey (1814-1902)

VOL. I. THE SEARCH AFTER PROSERPINE

II.

III.

IV.

MAY CAROLS.

PART I. THE DIVINE CHILDHOOD.

II.

PART II. THE SPIRITUAL MOTHERHOOD.

III.

PART III. MARIÆ IN CŒLIS.

LEGENDS OF THE SAXON SAINTS.

VOL. V.

VI.

VOL. VI. LEGENDS AND RECORDS OF THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

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MAY CAROLS.

I. PART I. THE DIVINE CHILDHOOD.

‘I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed, and her seed.’— Gen. iii. 15.

I.

Who feels not, when the Spring once more,
Stepping o'er Winter's grave forlorn
With winged feet, retreads the shore
Of widowed Earth, his bosom burn?

As ordered flower succeeds to flower,
And May the ladder of her sweets
Ascends, advancing hour by hour
From step to step, what heart but beats?

Some Presence veiled in fields and groves
That mingles rapture with remorse,
Some buried joy beside us moves,
And thrills the soul with such discourse

As they, perchance, that wondering pair
Who to Emmaus bent their way,
Hearing, heard not. Like them our prayer
We make:—‘The night is near us . . Stay!’

With Paschal chants the churches ring;
Their echoes strike along the tombs;
The birds their Hallelujahs sing;
Each flower with nature's incense fumes.

Our long-lost Eden seems restored—
As on we move with tearful eyes
We feel through all the illumined sward
Some upward-working Paradise.

II.

Upon Thy Face, O God, Thy world
Looks ever up in love and awe;
Thy stars in circles onward hurled
Sustain the steadying yoke of Law.

In alternating antiphons
Stream sings to stream and sea to sea;
And moons that set and sinking suns
Obeisance make, O God, to Thee.

The swallow, winter's rage o'erblown,
Again on warm Spring breezes borne
Revisiteth her haunts well-known;
The lark is faithful to the morn.

The whirlwind, missioned with its wings
To drown the fleet or fell the tower,
Obeys Thee as the bird that sings
Her love-chant in a fleeting shower.

Amid an ordered universe
Man's spirit only dares rebel:—
With light, O God, its darkness pierce!
With love its raging chaos quell!

III.

All but unutterable Name!
Adorable, yet awful, sound!
Thee can the sinful nations frame
Save with their foreheads to the ground?

Soul-searching and all-cleansing Fire!
To see Thy Countenance were to die:
Yet how beyond the bound retire
Of Thy serene immensity?

Thou mov'st beside us, if the spot
We change, a noteless, wandering tribe:
The planets of our Life and Thought
In Thee their little arcs describe.

In the dead calm, at cool of day,
We hear Thy voice, and turn, and flee:
Thy love outstrips us on our way:
From Thee, O God, we fly—to Thee.

IV.

How came there Sin to world so fair,
Where all things seem to bask in God,
Where breathes His Love in every air,
His life ascends from every sod?

O happy birds and happy bees,
And flowers that flash through matin gems!
O happy trees, and happier breeze
That sweep'st their dewy diadems!

Why are not all things good and bright?
Why are not all men kind and true?
O World so beauteous, wise, and right,
Your Maker is our Maker too!

V. SANCTA MARIA.

Mary! To thee the humble cry.
What seek they? Gifts to pride unknown.
They seek thy help—to pass thee by:—
They murmur, ‘Show us but thy Son.’

The childlike heart shall enter in:
The virgin soul its God shall see:
Mother, and maiden pure from sin,
Be thou the guide: the Way is He.

The mystery high of God made Man
Through thee to man is easier made:
Pronounce the consonant who can
Without the softer vowel's aid!

VI. FEST. NATIVITATIS B. V. M.

When thou wert born the murmuring world
Rolled on, nor dreamed of things to be,
From joy to sorrow madly whirled,
Despair disguised in revelry.

A princess thou of David's line;
The mother of the Prince of Peace,
That hour no royal pomps were thine:
The earth alone her boon increase

Before thee poured. September rolled
Down all the vine-clad Syrian slopes
Her robes of purple and of gold;
And birds sang loud from olive tops.

Perhaps old foes, they knew not why,
Relented. From a fount long sealed
Tears rose, perhaps, to Pity's eye:
Love-harvests crowned the barren field.

The respirations of the year,
At least, grew soft. O'er valleys wide
Pine-roughened crags again shone clear;
And the great Temple, far descried,

To watchers, watching long in vain,
To patriots grey, in bondage nursed,
Flashed back their hope—‘The Second Fane
In glory shall surpass the First!’

VII. AB ANGELO SALUTATA.

That angel's voice is in her ear!
Ah, not alone by Mary heard!
Like light it cleaves that region drear
Where never sang the matin bird!

It thrills the expectant Hades! They,
The pair that once through Eden ranged,
Amid their penal shadows grey
Stand up and smile, this hour avenged!

They see their queenly daughter grasp
The Fruit of Life, her bridal dower:
They see its boughs rush up, and clasp
The sleeping earth with starry bower.

Once more they tread that Eden bound:
Far up—all round—at last, at last
They see God's mountain city-crowned;
In every fount they see it glassed.

Why saw they not, the hour they fell,
Those hills, that City ‘like a Bride’?
Then too it girt that garden dell,
Predestined Heaven though undescried!

VIII. NIHIL RESPONDIT.

She hid her face from Joseph's blame
The Spirit's glory-shrouded Bride:
The sword comes next; but first the shame:
Meekly she bore it; nought replied.

In mutual sympathies we live:
The insulted heart forgives, but dies:
To her that wound was sanative
For life to her was sacrifice.

At us no barbless shaft is thrown
When charged with deeds by us unwrought;
For sins unchallenged, sins unknown,
Worse sins have stained us, act, or thought.

Her humbleness no sin could find
To weep for: yet, that hour, no less
Deeplier the habitual sense was shrined
In her of her own nothingness.

That hour foundations deeper yet
God sank in her; that so more high
Her greatness, spire and parapet,
Might rise and nearer to the sky;

That, wholly over-built by grace,
Nature might vanish, like some isle
In great towers lost—the buried base
Of some surpassing fortress pile.

IX. ST. JOSEPH'S DOUBT.

‘The Angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream.’

'Twas not her tear his doubt subdued;
No word of hers announced her Christ:
By him in dream that angel stood
With warning hand. A dream sufficed.

Where faith is strong, though light be dim,
How faint a beam reveals how much!
The Hand that made the worlds on him
Descended with a feather's touch.

‘Blessèd for ever who believed:’—
Like Her, through faith his crown he won:
His heart the Babe divine conceived;
His heart was sire of Mary's Son.

Hail, Image of the Father's Might!
The Heavenly Father's human shade!
Hail, silent King whose yoke was light!
Hail, Foster-sire whom Christ obeyed!

Hail, Warder of God's Church beneath,
Thy vigil keeping at her door
Year after year at Nazareth!
So guard, so guide it evermore!

X. FEST. VISITATIONIS.

The hilly region crossed with haste,
Its last dark ridge discerned no more,
Bright as the bow that spans a waste
She stood beside her Cousin's door;

And spake:—that greeting came from God!
Filled with the Spirit from on high
Sublime the aged Mother stood,
And cried aloud in prophecy,

‘Soon as thy voice had touched mine ears
The child in childless age conceived,
Leaped up for joy! Throughout all years
Blessed the Woman who believed.’

Type of Electing Love! 'tis thine
To sound God's greeting from the skies!
Thou speak'st, and Faith, a babe divine,
Leaps up thy Babe to recognise.

Within true hearts the second birth
Exults, though blind as yet and dumb.
The child of Grace his hands puts forth,
And prophesies of things to come.

XI. AMOR INNOCENTIUM.

Ascending from the convent-grates,
The children mount the woodland vale.
'Tis May-Day Eve; and Hesper waits
To light them, while the western gale

Blows softly on their bannered line:
And, lo! down all the mountain stairs
The shepherd children come to join
The convent children at their prayers.

They meet before Our Lady's fane:
On yonder central rock it stands,
Uplifting, ne'er invoked in vain,
That Cross which blesses all the lands.

Before the porch the flowers are flung;
The lamp hangs glittering 'neath the Rood;
The ‘Maris Stella’ hymn is sung;
Their chant each morn to be renewed.

Ah! if a secular muse might dare,
Far off, the children's song to catch;
To echo back, or burthen bear!—
As fitly might she hope to match

The throstle's note as theirs, 'tis true:
Yet, now and then, that borrowed tone,
Like sunbeams flashed on pine or yew
Might shoot a sweetness through her own!

XII. FEST. NATIVITATIS.

Primeval night had repossessed
Her empire in the fields of space;
Calm lay the kine on earth's dark breast;
The earth lay calm in heaven's embrace.

That hour, where shepherds kept their flocks,
From God a glory sudden fell:
The splendour smote the trees and rocks,
And lay, like dew, along the dell.

God's Angel close beside them stood:
‘Fear nought,’ that Angel said, and then,
‘Behold, I bring you tidings good:
The Saviour Christ is born to men.’

And straightway round him myriads sang
Again that anthem, and again,
Till all the hollow valley rang,
‘Glory to God, and peace to men.’

Thus in the violet-scented grove,
The May breeze murmuring softly by them,
The children sang. Who Mary love
The long year through have Christmas nigh them!

XIII. PROTEVANGELION.

When from their lurking place the Voice
Of God dragged forth that Fallen Pair
Still seemed the garden to rejoice,
The sinless Eden still was fair.

They, they alone, whose light of grace
But late made Paradise look dim
Stood now, a blot upon its face,
Before their God, nor gazed on Him.

They glanced not up; or they had seen
In that severe, death-dooming eye
Unutterable depths serene
Of sadly-piercing sympathy.

Not them alone that Eye beheld,
But, by their side, that other Twain
In whom the race whose doom was knelled
Once more should rise; once more should reign.

It saw that Infant crowned with blood—
And her from whose predestined breast
That Infant ruled the worlds. She stood
Her foot upon the serpent's crest!

Voice of primeval prophecy!
Of all the Gospels head and heart!
With Him, her Son and Saviour, she
Possessed, that hour, in thee a part!

XIV. DEI GENITRIX.

I see Him: on thy lap He lies
'Mid that Judæan stable's gloom:
O sweet, O awful Sacrifice!
He smiles in sleep, yet knows the doom.

Thou gav'st Him life! But was not this
That Life which knows no parting breath!
Unmeasured Life? unwaning Bliss?
Dread Priestess, lo! thou gav'st Him death!

Beneath the Tree thy Mother stood;
Beneath the Cross thou too shalt stand:—
O Tree of Life! O bleeding Rood!
Thy shadow stretches far its hand.

That God who made the sun and moon
In swaddling bands lies dumb and bound—
Love's Captive! darker prison soon
Awaits Thee in the garden ground.

He wakens. Paradise looks forth
Beyond the portals of the grave.
Life, life thou gavest! life to Earth,
Not Him! Thine Infant dies to save.

XV. ADOLESCENTULÆ AMAVERUNT TE NIMIS.

‘Behold! the wintry rains are past;
The airs of midnight hurt no more:
The young maids love thee. Come at last!
Thou lingerest at the garden-door.

`Blow over all the garden; blow,
Thou wind that breathest of the south
Through all the alleys winding low
With dewy wing and honeyed mouth!

‘But wheresoe'er thou wanderest, shape
Thy music ever to one Name:
Thou too, clear stream, to cave and cape
Be sure thou whisper of the same.

‘By every isle and bower of musk
Thy crystal clasps as on it curls
We charge thee, breathe it to the dusk;
We charge thee, grave it in thy pearls.’

The stream obeyed. That Name he bore
Far out above the moon-lit tide:
The breeze obeyed. He breathed it o'er
The unforgetting Pine; and died.

XVI.

The infant year with infant freak
Intent to dazzle and surprise,
Played with us long at hide and seek,
Turned on us now, now veiled her eyes.

Between the pines for ever green
And boughs by April half attired
She glanced; then sang, once more unseen,
‘The unbeheld is more desired.’

With footsteps vague, and hard to trace,
She crept from whitening bower to bower;
Now bent from heaven her golden face
Now veiled her radiance in a shower.

Like genial hopes and thoughts devout
That touch some sceptic soul forlorn,
And herald clearer faith, and rout
The night, and antedate the morn,

Her gifts. But thou, all-beauteous May,
Art come at last. O! with thee bring
Hearts pure as thine with thee to play,
And own the consummated spring.

To hands by deeds unblest defiled
In vain the whiteness of thy thorn!
Proud souls, where lurks no more the child.
For them thy violet is unborn!

For breasts that know nor joy nor hope
Thy songstress sings an idle strain:
Thy golden-domed laburnums drop
O'er loveless hearts their bowers in vain.

XVII. FEST. EPIPHANIÆ.

A veil is on the face of Truth:
She prophesies behind a cloud;
She ministers in robes of ruth
Nocturnal rites and disallowed.

Eleusis hints, but dares not speak;
The Orphic minstrelsies are dumb;
Lost are the Sibyl's books, and weak
Earth's olden faith in Him to come.

But ah, but ah, that Orient Star!
On straw-roofed shed and large-eyed kine
It flashes, guiding from afar
The Magians' long-linked camel-line!

Gold, frankincense, and myrrh they bring—
Love, Worship, Life severe and hard:
Their symbol gifts the Infant King
Accepts; and Truth is their reward.

Rejoice, O Sion, for thy night
Is past: the Lord, thy Light, is born:
The Gentiles shall behold thy light;
The kings walk forward in thy morn.

XVIII. FEST. EPIPHANIÆ.

They leave the land of gems and gold,
The shining portals of the East;
For Him, ‘the Woman's Seed’ foretold,
They leave the revel and the feast.

To earth their sceptres they have cast
And crowns by Kings ancestral worn;
They track the lonely Syrian waste;
They kneel before the Babe new-born.

O happy eyes that saw Him first!
O happy lips that kissed His feet!
Earth slakes at last her ancient thirst;
With Eden's joy her pulses beat.

True Kings are those who thus forsake
Their kingdoms for the Eternal King—
Serpent! her foot is on thy neck!
Herod! thou writh'st, but canst not sting!

He, He is King, and He alone,
Who lifts that Infant hand to bless;
Who makes His Mother's knee His Throne,
Yet rules the starry wilderness.

XIX. MATER DEI.

How many a lonely hermit-maid
Hath brightened like a dawn-touched isle
When, on her breast in vision laid,
That Babe hath lit her with His smile!

How many an agèd Saint hath felt,
So graced, a second spring renew
Her wintry breast; with Anna knelt
And trembled like the matin dew!

How oft th' unbending monk, no thrall
In youth of mortal smiles or tears,
Hath felt that Infant's touch through all
The armour of his hundred years!

But Mary's was no transient bliss;
Nor hers a vision's phantom gleam:
The hourly need, the voice, the kiss—
That Child was hers! 'twas not a dream!

At morning hers, and when the sheen
Of moonrise crept the cliffs along;
In silence hers, and hers between
The pulses of the night-bird's song.

And as the Child, the love. Its growth
Was, hour by hour, a growth in grace:
That Child was God; and love for both
Advanced perforce with equal pace.

XX. GAUDIUM ANGELORUM.

‘He looked on her humility’—
Ah humbler thrice that breast was made
When Jesus watched His mother's eye,
When God each God-born wish obeyed!

In her with seraph seraph strove
And each the other's purpose crost:
And now 'twas Reverence, now 'twas Love
The peaceful strife that won or lost.

Now to that Infant she extends
Those hands that mutely say ‘mine own!’
Now shrinks abashed, or swerves and bends
As bends a willow backward blown.

And ofttimes, like a roseleaf caught
By eddying airs from fairy land,
The kiss a sleeping brow that sought
Descends upon the unsceptred hand!

O tenderest awe whose sweet excess
Had ended in a fond despair
Had not the all-pitying helplessness
Constrained the boldness of her care!

O holiest strife! The angelic hosts
That watched it hid their dazzled eyes,
And lingered from the heavenly coasts
To bless that heavenlier Paradise!

XXI. LEGENDA.

O wearied Souls, by earth beguiled,
Round whom the world's enthralments close
Look back on her, that three-years' child,
Who first the life conventual chose!

A nun-like veil was o'er her thrown,
Her locks by fillet-bands made fast,
Swiftly she climbed the steps of stone;
Into the Temple swiftly passed.

Not once she paused her breath to take;
Not once cast back a homeward look:
As longs the hart his thirst to slake
When noontide rages, in the brook,

So longed that child to live for God;
So pined from earth's enthralments free,
To bathe her wholly in the flood
Of God's abysmal purity!

Anna and Joachim from far
Their eyes on that white vision raised;
And when, like caverned foam, or star
Cloud-hid, she vanished, still they gazed.

XXII. FEST. PRESENTATIONIS.

Twelve years had passed, and, still a child
In brightness of the unblemished face,
Once more she scaled those steps, and smiled
On Him who slept in her embrace.

As in she passed there fell a calm
On all: each bosom slowly rose
Like the long branches of the palm
When under them the south wind blows:

The scribe forgot his wordy lore;
The chanted psalm was heard far off;
Hushed was the clash of golden ore;
And hushed the Sadducean scoff.

Type of the Church, the gift was thine!
'Twas thine to offer first, that hour,
Thy Son—the Sacrifice Divine,
The Church's everlasting dower!

Great Priestess! round that aureoled brow
Which cloud or shadow ne'er had crossed,
Began there not thenceforth to grow
A milder dawn of Pentecost?

XXIII. THE FIRST DOLOUR.

(Gladio Transfixa.)

To be the mother of her Lord—
What means it? This; a bleeding heart!
The pang that woke at Simeon's word
Worked inward, never to depart.

The dreadful might of Sin she knew
As Innocence alone can know:
O'er her its deadliest gloom it threw
As shades lie darkest on the snow.

Yet o'er her Sorrow's depth no storm
Of earth's rebellious passion rolled:
So sleeps some lake no gusts deform
High on the dark hills' craggy fold.

In that still glass the unmeasured cliff,
With all its scars and clouds is shown:
And, mellowed in that mother's grief,
At times, O Christ, we catch Thine own!

XXIV.

The golden rains are dashed against
Those verdant walls of lime and beech
Wherewith our happy vale is fenced
Against the north; yet cannot reach

The stems that lift yon leafy crest
High up above their dripping screen:
The chestnut fans are downward pressed
On banks of bluebell hid in green.

White vapours float along the glen
Or rise from every sunny brake;
A pause amid the gusts—again
The warm shower sings across the lake.

Sing on, all-cordial showers, and bathe
The deepest root of loftiest pine!
The cowslip dim, the ‘primrose rathe’
Refresh; and drench in nectarous wine

Yon fruit-tree copse, all blossomed o'er
With forest-foam and crimsoned snow—
Behold! above it bursts once more
The world-embracing, heavenly bow!

XXV. LEGENDA.

As, flying Herod, southward went
That Child and Mother, unamazed,
Into Egyptian banishment,
The weeders left their work, and gazed.

That bright One spake to them, and said,
‘When Herod's messengers demand,
Passed not that Infant, Herod's dread,—
Passed not that Infant through your land?

‘Then shall ye answer make, and say,
Behold, since first the corn was green
No little Infant passed this way;
No little Infant we have seen.’

Earth heard; nor missed the Maid's intent—
As on the Flower of Eden passed
With Eden swiftness up she sent
A sun-browned harvest ripening fast.

By simplest words and sinless wheat
The messengers rode back beguiled;
And by that truthfullest deceit
Which saved the little new-born Child!

XXVI. THE SECOND DOLOUR.

(Cum Filio Profuga.)

The fruitful River slides along;
The Conqueror's City glitters nigh;
The Palm-groves ring with dance and song;
Earth trembles, crimsoned from the sky.

Far down the sunset, lonely stands
Some temple of a bygone age
Slow-settling into sea-like sands,
Long served with prayer and pilgrimage.

Here ruled the Shepherd-Kings, and they
That race from Sun and Moon which drew
The unending lines of Priestly sway:
Here Alexander's standard flew.

Here last the great Cæsarian star
Through Egypt's sunset flashed its beam
While pealed the Roman trump afar,
And Earth's first Empire like a dream

Dissolved. But who are they—the Three
That pierce thus late yon desert wide?
The Babe is on His Mother's knee;
Low-bent an old Man walks beside.

What say'st thou, Egypt? ‘Let them come!
Of such as little note I keep
As of the least of flies that hum
Above my deserts, or my deep!’

XXVII. SAINT JOSEPH.

True Prince of David's line! thy chair
Is set on every poor man's floor:
Labour through thee a crown doth wear
More rich than kingly crowns of yore!

True Confessor! thine every deed,
While error ruled the world, or night
Confessed aright the Christian creed,
The Christian warfare waged aright.

Teach us, like thee, our heart to raise,
In toil not ease contemplatist;
Like thee, o'er lowly tasks to gaze
On her whose eyes are still on Christ.

O teach us, thou whose ebbing breath
Was watched by Mary and her Son,
To welcome age, await in death
True life's true garland, justly won.

XXVIII. ‘JOSEPH, HER HUSBAND.’

Gladsome and pure was Eden's bower—
Saint Joseph's house was holier far,
More rich in Love's auguster dower,
More amply lit by Wisdom's star.

The Queen of Virgins where he sate
Beside him stood and watched his hand:
His daughter-wife, his angel-mate
Submissive to his least command.

Hail, Patriarch blest and sage! on earth
Thine was the bridal of the skies!
Thy house was heaven: for by its hearth
Thy God reposed in mortal guise.

Hail! life most sweet in life's decline!
Hail death, than life more bright, more blest!
The hands of Mary clasping thine,
Thy head upon the Saviour's breast!

XXIX. SAINT JOSEPH'S PATRONAGE.

(‘Constituit eum dominum domus suæ.’ The Household Saints.)

The Apostle's life, the Martyr's death,
The all-conquering Word, all-wondrous Sign,
Have greatness sense-discerned. By faith,
And Faith's strong Love, we reach to thine.

Through lower heavens those others run,
Fair planets kenned by feebler eyes:
Thy loftier light is later won,
Serener gleam from lonelier skies.

Thou stand'st within: they move without:
More near the God-Man was thy place:
It was: it is: we cannot doubt
That as thy greatness was thy grace.

No priestly tiar, no prophet rod
Were thine: with them thou art who zone
The altar of Incarnate God,
Who throng the white steps of the Throne.

There Anna rests, and Joachim
That Great One's Parents; at their side
Elizabeth, not far from Him
Her Baptist Son for Right who died.

A hierarchy apart they sit,
A Royal House benign yet dread,
In Godhead veiled, by Godhead lit—
There highest shines thy silver head.

XXX. MATER CHRISTI.

Daily beneath His mother's eyes
Her Lamb matured His lowliness;
'Twas hers the lovely Sacrifice
With fillet and with flower to dress.

Beside that mother's knee He knelt;
With heavenly-human lips He prayed:
His Will within her will she felt;
And yet His Will her will obeyed.

Gethsemané! when day is done
Thy flowers with falling dews are wet:
Her tears fell never; for the sun
Those tears that brightened never set.

The house was silent as that shrine
The priest but entered once a year:
There shone His emblem. Light Divine!
Thy presence and Thy power were here!

XXXI. MATER CHRISTI.

He willed to lack; He willed to bear;
He willed by suffering to be schooled;
He willed the chains of flesh to wear;
Yet from her arms the worlds He ruled.

As tapers 'mid the noontide glow
With merged yet separate radiance burn,
With human taste and touch even so
The things He knew He willed to learn.

He sat beside the lowly door:
His homeless eyes appeared to trace
In evening skies remembered lore
And shadows of His Father's face.

One only knew Him. She alone
Who nightly to His cradle crept
And, lying like the moonbeam prone,
Worshipped her Maker as He slept.

XXXII. MATER CREATORIS.

Bud forth a Saviour, Earth! fulfil
Thy first of functions, ever new!
Balm-dropping heaven, for aye distil
Thy grace like manna or like dew!

‘To us, this day, a Child is born.’
Heaven knows not mere historic facts—
Celestial mysteries night and morn
Live on in ever-present Acts.

Calvary's dread Victim in the skies
On God's great altar rests even now:
The Pentecostal glory lies
For ever round the Church's brow.

From Son and Father, He, the Lord
Of Love and Life, proceeds alway:
Upon the first Creative Word
Creation, trembling, hangs for aye.

Nor less ineffably renewed
Than when on earth the tie began,
Is that mysterious Motherhood
Which re-creates the worlds and man.

XXXIII. MATER SALVATORIS.

O Heart with His in just accord!
O Soul His echo, tone for tone!
O Spirit that heard and kept His word!
O Countenance moulded like His Own!

Behold, she seemed on Earth to dwell;
But hid in light she ever sat
Beneath the Throne ineffable
Chanting her clear Magnificat.

Fed from the boundless heart of God
The joy within her rose more high
And all her being overflowed,
Until that Hour decreed drew nigh.

That hour, there crept her spirit o'er
The shadow of that pain world-wide
Whereof her Son the substance bore—
Him offering, half in Him she died;

Standing, like that strange Moon whereon
The mask of Earth lies dim and dead,
An orb of glory, shadow-strewn,
Yet girdled with a luminous thread.

XXXIV. HER FOUNDATIONS ARE ON THE HOLY HILLS.

Her Child, her God, in Nature's right
She loved: we love Him but by Grace:
Behold! our Virtue's proudest height
Is lower than her Virtue's base!

Alone by holy Nature taught
All lesser mothers love their own:
Her love was Nature's love, heaven-caught,
And lightning-lifted to the Throne.

Her God! alone through worship she
Proportioned love for Him could prove!
Her God, and yet her Offspring! He
Both loved her, and was bound to love!

XXXV. MATER ADMIRABILIS.

O Mother-maid! to none save thee
Belongs in full a Parent's name;
So fruitful thy Virginity,
Thy Motherhood so pure from blame!

All other parents, what are they?
Thy types! In them thou stood'st rehearsed
As they in bird, and bud, and spray.
Thine Antitype? The Eternal First!

Prime Parent He: and next Him thou!
O'ershadowed by the Father's Might
Thy ‘Fiat’ was thy bridal vow:
Thine offspring He, the ‘Light from Light.’

Her Son Thou wert: her Son Thou art
O Christ! Her substance fed Thy growth:
Alone, she shaped Thee in her heart—
Thy Mother and Thy Father both.

XXXVI. MATER AMABILIS.

Mother of Love! Thy love to Him
Cherub and Seraph can but guess:
A mother sees its image dim
In her own breathless tenderness.

That infant touch none else could feel
Vibrates like light through all her sense:
Far off she hears his cry: her zeal
With lions fights in his defence.

Unmarked his youth goes by: his hair
Still smooths she down, still strokes apart;
The first white thread that meets her there
Glides like a dagger through her heart.

Men praise him: on her matron cheek
There dawns once more a maiden red:
Of war, of battle-fields they speak:
She sees once more his father dead.

In sickness—half in sleep—she hears
His foot, ere yet that foot is nigh:
Wakes with a smile; and scarcely fears
If he but clasp her hand, to die.

XXXVII. THE THIRD DOLOUR.

(Filium quærens.)

Three days she seeks her Child in vain:
He who vouchsafed that holy woe
And makes the gates of glory pain
He, He alone its depth can know.

She wears the garment He must wear;
She tastes His chalice! From a Cross
Unseen she cries, ‘Where art Thou, where?
Why hast Thou me forsaken thus?’

With feebler hand she touches first
That sharpest thorn in all His Crown,
Worse than the Nails, the Reed, the Thirst,
Seeming Desertion's icy frown!

O Saviour! we, the weak, the blind
We lose Thee, snared in Pleasure's bound:
Teach us once more Thy Face to find
Where only Thou art truly found,

In Thy true Church, its Faith, its Love
Its anthemed Rites or Penance mute
And that Interior Life whereof
Eternal Life is flower and fruit.

XXXVIII. MATER FILII.

Others, the hours of youth gone by,
A mother's hearth and home forsake;
And, with the need, the filial tie
Relaxes, though it does not break.

But Thou wert born to be a Son—
God's Son in heaven, Thy will was this,
To pass the chain of Sonship on
And bind in one whatever is.

Thou cam'st the Son of Man to be,
That so Thy brethren too might bear
Adoptive Sonship, and with Thee
Thy Sire's eternal kingdom share.

Transcendently the Son Thou art:
In this mysterious bond entwine,
As in a single, two-celled heart,
Thy natures, human and divine.

XXXIX.

When April's sudden sunset cold
Through half-clothed boughs with watery sheen
Bursts on the high, new-cowslipped wold
And bathes a world half gold half green

Then shakes the illuminated air
With din of birds; the vales far down
Grow phosphorescent here and there;
Forth flash the turrets of the town;

Along the sky thin vapours scud;
Bright zephyrs curl the choral main;
The wild ebullience of the blood
Rings joy-bells in the heart and brain:

Yet in that music discords mix;
The unbalanced lights like meteors play;
And, tired of splendours that perplex,
The dazzled spirit sighs for May.

XL.

Not yet, not yet! the Season sings
Not of fruition yet but hope;
Still holds aloft, like balanced wings
Her scales, and lets not either drop.

The white ash, last year's skeleton,
Still glares uncheered by leaf or shoot
'Gainst azure heavens, and joy hath none
In that pure primrose at her foot.

Yet Nature's virginal suspense
Is not forgetfulness nor sloth:
Where'er we wander soul and sense
Discern a blindly working growth.

Her throne once more the daisy takes
That white star of our dusky earth;
And the sky-cloistered lark down-shakes
Her passion of seraphic mirth.

'Twixt barren hills and clear cold skies
She weaves, ascending high and higher,
Songs florid as those traceries
Which won their name of old from fire.

Sing! thou that need'st no ardent clime
To sun the sweetness from thy breast
And teach us those delights sublime
Wherein ascetic spirits rest!

XLI.

The moon, ascending o'er a mass
Of tangled yew and sable pine,
What sees she in yon watery glass?
A tearful countenance divine.

Far down, the winding hills between,
A sea of vapour bends for miles,
Unmoving. Here and there dim-seen
The knolls above it rise like isles.

The tall rock glimmers spectre-white;
The cedar in its sleep is stirred;
At times the bat divides the night;
At times the far-off flood is heard.

Above, that shining blue!—below,
That shining mist! Oh, not more pure
Midwinter's landscape, robed in snow
And fringed with frosty garniture!

The fragrance of the advancing year
Alone assures us it is May.
Make answer! in the heavenlier sphere
Must all of earth have passed away?

XLII. NAZARETH.

Before the Saviour's eyes unscaled
The Beatific Vision stood—
If God from her that splendour veiled
A while, in Him she gazed on God.

The Eternal Spirit o'er them hung:
The Eternal Father moved beside:
With hands forth-held the Angelic throng
Worshipped their Maker far descried.

Yet neither He who said of yore
‘Let there be light’—and all was day—
Nor she that, still a creature, wore,
Creation's crown, and wears for aye,

To casual gazers wondrous seemed:
The wanderer sat beside their door,
Partook their broken bread, and deemed
The donors kindly; nothing more.

In Eden thus that primal Pair
Ere sin had marred their first estate
Sate side by side in silent prayer,
Their earliest sunset fronting, sate;

And now the lion now the pard
Piercing the Cassia bower drew nigh;
Fixed on the twain a mute regard,
Half pleased, half vacant; then passed by.

XLIII. FŒDERIS ARCA.

From end to end, O God, Thy Will
With swift yet ordered might doth reach:
Thy purposes their scope fulfil
In sequence, resting each on each.

In Thee is nothing sudden; nought
From harmony and law that swerves:
The orbits of Thine act and thought
In soft gradation wind their curves.

O then with what a gradual care
Must Thou have shaped that Ark and Shrine
Ordained the Eternal Word to bear,
That Garden of Thy mystic Vine!

How white a gift within her breast
Lay stored, for Him a couch to strew!
How vast a virtue lined His nest!
How many a grace beside Him grew!

Of love on love what sweet excess!
How deep a faith! a hope how high!—
Mary! on earth of thee we guess;
But we shall see thee when we die.

XLIV. SPIRITUS SPONSA.

As though, fast-borne the hills along,
At dawn some shepherd girl or boy
Should wrestle with the lark in song
And, shaft for shaft, retort his joy,

So walked, the hills of Truth above,
The Bride Elect, the sinless Maid;
So, challenged by the all-heavenly Love
The all-heavenly Lover's voice repaid.

From zenith heights incessant fell
On her His Grace like sunny rain:
Unvanquished and invincible
Her heart repaid that golden grain.

Perchance, in many an instant gleam
She caught, unscorched and unabashed,
That vision of the Face supreme
Which on her first-born spirit flashed!

Diseased are we: the infectious fire
Corrupts our life-blood from our birth:
She, she was like the unfallen Sire,
Compacted out of virgin earth.

In God she lived: His world she trod:
Saw Him and His; saw nought beside—
He only lives who lives in God:
That hour when Adam fell, he died.

XLV. ORANTE.

She mused upon the Saints of old;
Rock-like, on rock she stood, foot-bare:
On Him she mused, that Child foretold;
To Him she held her hands in prayer,

Unwavering hands that, drawing fires
Of grace from heaven, our earth endowed
With heavenly breath like mountain spires
That suck the lightning from the cloud.

No moment passed without its crown;
And each new grace was used so well
It dragged some tenfold talent down,
Some miracle on miracle.

O golden House! O boundless store
Of wealth by heavenly commerce won!
When God Himself could give no more,
He gave thee all; He gave His Son!

XLVI. RESPEXIT HUMILITATEM.

Not all thy Purity, although
The whitest moon that ever lit
The peaks of Lebanonian snow
Shone dusk and dim compared with it;

Not that great Love of thine whose beams
Transcended in their virtuous heat
Those suns that melt the ice-bound streams
And make earth's pulses newly beat;

It was not these that from the sky
Drew down to thee the Eternal Word:
He looked on thy Humility;
He knew thee, ‘Handmaid of thy Lord.’

Let no one claim with thee a part,
Let no one, Mary, name thy name,
While, aping God, upon his heart
Pride sits, a Demon robed in flame.

Proud Vices, die! Where Sin has place
Be Sin's avenger self-disgust:
Proud Virtues, doubly die, that Grace
At last may burgeon from your dust!

XLVII. MULIER FORTIS.

Supreme among the things create
God's Image with the downward brow!
Greatness that know'st not thou art great!
Thus great, Humility art thou.

All strength beside is weakness. Might
Belongs to God; and they alone
Self-emptied souls and seeming-slight
Are filled with God, and share His throne.

O Mary! strong wert thou and meek;
Thy meekness gave thee strength divine:
Thyself in nothing didst thou seek;
Therefore thy Maker made Him thine.

Through Pride our parents disobeyed;
Rebellious Sense avenged the wrong:
The Soul, the body's captive made,
No more was fruitful, or was strong.

With barrenness the earth was cursed;
Inviolate she brought forth no more
Her fruits, nor freely as at first:
Thou cam'st, her Eden to restore!

Low breathes the wind upon the string;
The harp, responsive, sounds in turn:
Thus o'er thy Soul the Spirit's wing
Creative passed; and Christ was born.

II. PART II. THE SPIRITUAL MOTHERHOOD.

‘Behold thy mother.’— John xix. 27.

I. AGIOS ATHANATOS.

Cloud-piercing Mountains! Chance and Change
More high than you their thrones advance!
Self-vanquished Nature's rockiest range
Gives way before them like the trance

Of one that wakes. From morn to eve
Through fissured clefts her mists make way;
At Night's cold touch they freeze, and cleave
Her crags, and with a Titan's sway

Flake off and peel the rotting rocks,
And heap the glacier tide below
With isles of sand and floating blocks
Like leaves on streams when tempests blow.

Lo, thus the great decree all-just
O Earth, thy mountains hear; and learn
Like man its awful import—‘dust
Thou art, and shalt to dust return.’

He only is Who ever was;
The All-measuring Mind; the Will Supreme:
Rocks, mountains, worlds, like bubbles pass:
God is; the things not God but seem.

II. PASTOR ETERNUS.

I scaled the hills. No murky blot
No mist obscured the diamond air:
One time, O God, those hills were not!
Thou spak'st: at Thy command they were!

O'er ebon meres the ledges hung;
High up were summits white with snow:
Some peak athwart the mountains flung
A crownéd Shadow creeping slow.

Still crept it onwards. Vague and vast
From ridge to ridge the mountains o'er
That king-like Semblance slowly passed:
A shepherd's crook for staff it bore.

O Thou that leadest like a sheep
Thine Israel! all the earth is Thine!
Thy mystic Manhood still must sweep
Thy worlds with healing shade divine.

The airy pageant died with day:
The hills, the worlds themselves must die:
But Thou remainest such alway:
Thy Love is from Eternity.

III. JESUM OSTENDE.

Who doubts that thou art finite? Who
Is ignorant that from Godhead's height
To what is loftiest here below
The interval is infinite?

O Mary! with that smile thrice-blest
Upon their petulance look down;
Their dull negation, blind protest:
Thy smile will melt away their frown.

Show them thy Son! That hour their heart
Will beat and burn with love like thine;
Grow large; and learn from thee that art
Which communes best with things divine.

The man who grasps not what is best
In creaturely existence, he
Is narrowest in the brain, and least
Can grasp the thought of Deity.

IV. TURRIS EBURNEA.

This scheme of worlds which vast we call
Is only vast compared with man:
Compared with God, the One yet All,
Its greatness dwindles to a span.

A Lily with its isles of buds
Asleep on some unmeasured sea:—
O God, the starry multitudes
What are they more than this to Thee!

Yet, girt by Nature's petty pale
Each tenant holds the place assigned
To each in Being's awful scale:
The last of creatures leaves behind

The abyss of Nothingness: the first
Into the abyss of Godhead peers
Waiting that Vision which shall burst
In glory on the eternal years.

Tower of our Hope! through thee we climb
Finite creation's topmost stair;
Through thee from Sion's height sublime
Towards God we gaze through clearer air.

Infinite distance still divides
Created from Creative Power;
But all which intercepts and hides
Lies dwarfed by that surpassing Tower!

V. CONSERVABAT IN CORDE.

As every change of April sky
Is imaged in the unchangeful brook
Her meditative memory
Mirrored His every deed and look.

As suns through summer ether rolled
Mature each growth the spring has wrought,
Her love's calm solstice turned to gold
Her harvests of quiescent thought.

Her soul was as a vase, and shone
Illumed but with the interior ray;
Her Maker's finger wrote thereon
A mystic Bible new each day.

Deep Heart! In all His sevenfold might
The Paraclete with thee abode,
And, sacramented there in light,
Bare witness of the things of God.

VI. THE KINDLY TRANSIENCE.

‘Like flowers,’ they tell us, ‘Life must fade!’
Ah flower-faced Friend! if flowers must die
Immortal sweets of these are made:
Thus Time bequeaths Eternity.

‘Life is a fleeting shade!’ What then?
The Substance doth the Shadow cast:
Essential Life, it recks not when,
Shall crown this seeming Life at last!

Thus, while May breezes whirling caught
Dead leaves poor spoils of winter gone
Half-truths, deciduous spoils of Thought,
Their clothing from on high put on:

And better far it seemed to plight
To earth a transient troth and trust
Than with corruption wed, and blight
The Spirit's hope with deathless dust.

VII.

Stronger and steadier every hour
The pulses of the season's glee
As higher climbs that vernal Power
Which rules the azure revelry.

Trees that from winter's grey eclipse
Of late but pushed their topmost plume
Or felt with green-touched finger-tips
For spring, their perfect robes assume.

Like one that reads not one that spells
The unvarying rivulet onward runs:
And bird to bird from leafier cells
Sends forth more leisurely response.

Through gorse-gilt coverts bounds the deer;
The gorse, whose latest splendours won
Make all the fulgent wolds appear
Bright as the pastures of the sun.

A balmier zephyr curls the wave;
More purple flames o'er ocean dance;
And the white breaker by the cave
Falls with more cadenced resonance;

While, vague no more, the mountains stand
With quivering line or hazy hue,
But drawn with finer firmer hand,
And settling into deeper blue.

VIII. MARIÆ CLIENS.

A little longer on the earth
That aged creature's eyes repose
Though half their light and all their mirth
Are gone; and then for ever close.

She thinks that something done long since
Ill pleases God: or why should He
So long delay to take her hence
Who waits His will so lovingly?

Whene'er she hears the church-bells toll
She lifts her head, though not her eyes
With wrinkled hands, but youthful soul
Counting her lip-worn rosaries.

And many times the weight of years
Falls from her in her waking dreams:
A child her mother's voice she hears:
To tend her father's steps she seems.

Once more she hears the whispering rains
On flowers and paths her girlhood trod;
Yet of things present nought remains
Save one abiding sense of God.

Mary! make smooth her downward way!
Not dearer to the young thou art
Than her. Make glad her latest May;
And hold her, dying, on thy heart!

IX. IN MORTE TUTAMEN.

It was the dread last Eucharist:
The hopes and fears of earth were gone;
The latest, lingering friend dismissed;
The bed was ashes strewed o'er stone.

It was the dear last Eucharist:
The old man lay in silent prayer:
His heart was now a shrine; and Christ
Was with His Mother whispering there.

He heard them; heard within that veil
Voices that Angels may not hear,
Not he that said to Mary, ‘hail,’
Not he that watched the Sepulchre;

Voices that met with touch like light;
Murmurs that mixed, as when their breath
Two pine trees, side by side, unite:
Of Love one whispered; one of Death.

X. SPECULUM JUSTITIÆ.

Not in Himself the Eternal Word
Lay hid upon Creation's day:
His Loveliness abroad He poured
On all the worlds, and pours for aye.

Not in Himself the Incarnate Son
In whom Man's race is born again
His glory hides. The victory won
He rose to send His ‘Gifts on Men.’

In sacraments, His dread behests,
In Providence, in granted prayer,
Before the time He manifests
His Presence, far as man may bear.

He shines not from a vault of gloom;
The horizon round His splendour paints:
The sphere of Souls His beams illume;
His light is glorious in His Saints.

He shines upon His Church that Moon
Who, in the watches of the night,
Transmits to Earth the entrusted boon,
A sister orb of sacred light.

And thou, pure mirror of His grace!
As sun reflected in a sea,
So, Mary, feeblest eyes the face
Of Him thou lov'st discern in thee.

XI. AUXILIUM CHRISTIANORUM.

Not for herself doth Mary hold
That Mother-Crown, that Queenly Throne;
The loftiest in the Saviour's Fold
The least possesses of her own.

Pure thoughts that make to God their quest
With her find footing o'er the clouds,
Like those sea-crossing birds that rest
A moment on the sighing shrouds.

In her our hearts, no longer nursed
On dust, for spiritual beauty yearn;
From her our instincts, as at first,
An upward gravitation learn.

Through her draw nigh the things remote:
For in true love's supernal sphere
No more round self the affections float,
More near to God, to man more near.

In her, the weary warfare past,
The port attained, the exile o'er,
We see the Church's bark at last
Close-anchored on the eternal shore!

XII.

O Cowslips sweetening lawn and vale,
O Harebells drenched in noontide dew,
O moon-white Primrose, Wind-flower frail!
The song should be of her, not you!

The May breeze answered, whispering low,
‘Not thine: they sing her praises best!
The flowers her grace in theirs can show:
Her claims they prove not, yet attest.

‘Beneath all fair things round thee strewn
Her beauty lurks, by sense unseen:
Who lifts their veil uprears a throne
In holy hearts to Beauty's Queen.’

XIII. AB ETERNO ORDINATA.

Eternal Beauty, ere the spheres
Had rolled from out the gulfs of night,
Sparkled, through all the unnumbered years
Before the Eternal Father's sight:

Truth's solemn reflex—not a Dream—
Created Wisdom's smile unpriced—
Before His eyes it hung, a gleam
Flashed from the eternal Thought of Christ.

It hung, the unbodied antitype
Of all Creation shapes and sings;
That finite world which Time makes ripe,
Which Uncreated Light enrings.

Star-like within the depths serene
Of that still vision, Mary, thou
With Him, thy Son, of God wert seen
Millenniums ere the lucid brow

Of Eve o'er Eden founts had bent,
Millenniums ere that second Pair
With shame the hopes of man had blent,
Had stained the brightness once so fair.

Elect of Creatures! Man in thee
Beholds that primal Beauty yet;
Sees all that Man was formed to be,
Sees all that Man can ne'er forget!

XIV.

Three worlds there are—the first of Sense—
That sensuous earth which round us lies;
The next, of Faith's Intelligence;
The third, of Glory, in the skies.

The first is palpable, but base;
The second heavenly, but obscure;
The third is star-like in the face,
But ah! remote that world as pure.

Yet, glancing through our misty clime,
Some sparkles from that loftier sphere
Make way to earth; then most what time
The annual spring-flowers re-appear.

Amid the coarser needs of earth
All shapes of brightness, what are they
But wanderers exiled from their birth
Or pledges of a happier day?

Yea, what is Beauty, judged aright,
But some surpassing, transient gleam;
Some smile from heaven, in waves of light
Rippling o'er life's distempered dream?

Or broken memories of that bliss
Which rushed through first-born Nature's blood
When He who ever was, and is
Looked down, and saw that all was good?

XV.

Alas! not only loveliest eyes
And brows with lordliest lustre bright
But Nature's self, her woods and skies
The credulous heart can cheat or blight.

And why? Because the sin of man
'Twixt Fair and Good has made divorce
And stained, since Evil first began,
That stream so heavenly at its source.

O perishable vales and groves!
Your master was not made for you:
Ye are but creatures! human loves
Are to the great Creator due.

And yet, through Nature's symbols dim
There are with keener sight that pierce
The outward husk and reach to Him
Whose garment is the universe.

For this to earth the Saviour came
In flesh; in part for this He died;
That man might have in soul or frame
No faculty unsanctified.

That Fancy's self, so prompt to lead
Through paths disastrous or defiled,
Upon the Tree of Life might feed;
And Sense with Soul be reconciled.

XVI. IDOLATRIA.

The fancy of an age gone by
When Fancy's self to earth declined
Still thirsting for Divinity
Yet still, through sense, to Godhead blind

Poor mimic of that Truth of old
The Patriarchs' Faith—a Faith revealed—
Compressed its God in mortal mould
Poor prisoner of Creation's field.

Nature and Nature's Lord were one!
Then countless gods from cloud and stream
Glanced forth; from sea, and moon, and sun:
So ran the Pantheistic dream.

And thus the All-Holy, thus the All-True,
The One Supreme, the Good, the Just,
Like mist was scattered, lost like dew,
And vanished in the wayside dust.

Mary! through thee the idols fell:
When He the Nations longed for came—
True God yet Man, with man to dwell,
The phantoms hid their heads for shame.

His place, or thine, removed, ere long
The Bards would push the Sects aside;
And, lifted by the might of song,
Olympus stand re-edified!

‘The Desire of the Nations.’

XVII. ‘IN HIM WE HAVE OUR BEING.’

The God who lives in those bright flowers
That wave and flash from yonder rock
O children singing 'mid your bowers
In you lives also, pleased to mock

His own unmoved Immensity
With you—in you—to sport and play:
As ripples on a summer sea
Are ye: unchanged that sea for aye!

Thus much of Truth they knew that feigned
Of old, their God with Nature one:
Another, loftier truth remained
For us, which now they read who run.

Half-truths are Falsehood's baits: too near
They roam to Error's maze of doubt,
And, like some scared, outlying deer,
O'er-leap the limit, in and out.

Such quarry, hunter youths, beware!
That bourne is demon-haunted ground;
And, bone from bone, the demons tear
The man who steps beyond its bound.

XVIII. TOTA PULCHRA.

A broken gleam on wave and flower,
A music that in utterance dies,
A redd'ning leaf, a falling shower,
Behold that Beauty which we prize!

And ah! how oft Corruption works
Through that brief Beauty's force or wile!
How oft a gloom eternal lurks
Beneath an evanescent smile!

But thou, serene and smiling light
Of every grace to man benign,
In thee all harmonies unite;
All minstrelsies of Truth are thine.

Of old whate'er to mind or heart
Was dear ‘had leave’ with thee to rest:
The ‘little birds’ of every Art
Hung on thy Fane their procreant nest.

XIX. ‘AD NIVES.’

Before the morn began to break
The Bright One bent above that pair
Whose childless vows aspired to take
The Mother of their Lord for heir.

'Twas August: even in midnight shade
The roofs were hot, and hot the street:
‘Build me a fane,’ that Vision said,
‘Where first your eyes the snow shall meet.’

With snow the Esquiline was strewn
At morn!—Fair Legend! who but thinks
Of thee, when first the breezes blown
From summer Alp to Alp he drinks?

He stands: he hears the torrents dash:
The sultry valley steams; and lo!
Through chasms of endless azure flash
The peaks of everlasting snow!

He stands; he listens; on his ear
Swells softly forth some virgin hymn,
The white procession winding near
With glimmering lights in sunshine dim.

Mother of Purity and Peace!
They sing the Saviour's name and thine—
Clothe them for ever with the fleece
Unspotted of thy Lamb divine!

Santa Maria Maggiore, on the Esquiline, at Rome.

XX. FEST. PURITATIS.

Far down the bird may sing of love;
The honey-bearing blossom blow:
But hail ye hills that rise above
The limit of perpetual snow!

O Alpine City, with thy walls
Of rock eterne and spires of ice
Where torrent still to torrent calls
And precipice to precipice;

How like that holier City thou
The heavenly Salem's earthly porch,
Which rears among the stars her brow
And plants firm feet on earth—the Church!

‘Decaying, ne'er to be decayed,’
Her woods like thine renew their youth:
Her streams, in rocky arms embayed,
Are clear as virtue, strong as truth.

At times the lake may burst its dam;
Black pine and rock the valley strew;
But o'er the ruin soon the lamb
Its flowery pasture crops anew.

Like thee in regions near the sky
She piles her cloistered snows, and thence
Diffuses gales of purity
O'er fields of consecrated sense.

On those still heights a lovelight glows
The plains from them above receive;
Not all the Lily! There thy Rose,
O Mary, triumphs, morn and eve!

Through thee Art preached, 'mid change and strife,
The eternal Peace, the immortal Love,
And o'er the weeping vale of life
Her heavenly rainbow Painting wove.

Those pictures, fair as moon or star,
The ages dear to Faith brought forth
Formed but the illumined calendar
Of her that Church which knows thy worth.

Not less doth Nature teach through thee
That mystery hid in hues and lines:
Who loves thee not hath lost the key
To all her sanctuaries and shrines.

XXI.

The night through yonder cloudy cleft
With many a lingering last regard,
Withdraws—but slowly—and hath left
Her mantle on the darksome sward.

The lawns with silver dews are strewn!
The winds lie hushed in cave and tree;
Nor stirs a flower, save one alone
That bends beneath the earliest bee.

Peace over all the garden broods;
Pathetic sweets the thickets throng;
Like breath the vapour o'er the woods
Ascends, dim woods without a song;

Or hangs, a shining, fleece-like mass
O'er half yon lake that winds afar
Among the forests, still as glass,
The mirror of that Morning Star

Which, halfway wandering from the sky,
Amid the glimmering dawn delays,
And, large and less alternately,
Bends down a lustrous, tearful gaze.

Mother and home of Spirits blest!
Bright gate of Heaven and golden bower!
Thy best of blessings, love and rest,
On earth, ere yet thou leav'st her, shower!

XXII. STELLA MATUTINA.

Shine out, O Star, and sing the praise
Of that unrisen Sun whose glow
Thus feeds thee with thine earlier rays:
The secret of thy song we know.

Thou sing'st that Sun of Righteousness,
Sole light of this benighted globe
Whose beams, from Him reflected, dress
His Mother in her shining robe!

Pale Lily, pearled around with dew,
Lift high that heaven-illumined vase
And sing the glories ever new
Of her, God's chalice, ‘full of grace.’

Cerulean Ocean fringed with white
That wear'st her colours evermore
In all thy pureness, all thy might,
Resound her name from shore to shore,

Her name, and His, that, like thy rim
Of light the dusky lands around,
Still girds Creation's shadow dim
With Incarnation's shining bound.

Transfigured Earth, disguised too long,
It falls—that Pagan mask of Sense!
Burst forth, dumb worlds, at last in song
Of spiritual Intelligence!

XXIII. THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT.

Man's soul a palace is: therein
A kingly senate sits in state:
But under-winding caves of Sin
A pestilence all round create.

Man's head uptowers in arctic air:
O'er temperate zones his heart hath sway:
But tropic sands there are; and there
The lions of our nature prey.

Dread Maker of our twofold being
In night and day alternate robed,
Shine on us, that the monsters, fleeing,
May leave Thine Image throned and globed!

Shine on us;—and thou shinest! sun-bright
Flash back the ransomed fields and meads
Trod by that Form compact of light
That only mid the lilies feeds.

O earth, partaker of the curse,
Thy glory fled when Adam fell:
Yet, not her mother but her nurse,
Of Mary earth was capable!

XXIV. MADE SUBJECT TO VANITY.

Poor earthly House of flesh and blood!
Imprisoned Spirit's mortal mould
What rapture-thrills in fount and flood
Are thine, and on the windy wold!

And yet what art thou? Bond and chain!
To cheat the whole, thou giv'st the part:
The mother clasps her babe—'tis vain;
She cannot hide him in her heart!

The whole great Soul would hear, would see:
The sense is bound to eye, to ear:
Still ‘Touch me not,’ remains for thee:
‘Not yet ascended,’ still we hear!

O pure in life, O sweet in death
O sweet and sinless flesh of flowers
I would that life with such light breath
Such sweetness born of death, were ours!

XXV. MATER DIVINÆ GRATIÆ.

The gifts a mother showers each day
Upon her softly-clamorous brood,
The gifts they value but for play,
The graver gifts of clothes and food,

Whence come they but from him who sows
With harder hand, and reaps, the soil;
The merit of his labouring brows,
The guerdon of his manly toil?

From Him the Grace: through her it stands
Adjusted, meted, and applied;
And ever, passing through her hands,
Enriched it seems, and beautified.

Love's mirror doubles Love's caress:
Love's echo to Love's voice is true:
Their Sire the children love not less
Because they clasp a Mother too.

XXVI. MATER DIVINÆ GRATIÆ.

‘They have no wine.’ The tender guest
Was grieved their feast should lack for aught:
He seemed to slight her mute request:
Not less the grace she wished He wrought.

O great in Love! O full of Grace
That winds in thee a river broad
From Christ, with heaven-reflecting face,
Gladdening the City of thy God!

Be this thy gift: that man henceforth
No more should creep through life content,
Draining the springs impure of earth
With life's material element.

Let sacraments to sense succeed:
Let nought be winning, nought be good
Which fails of Him to speak, and bleed
Once more with His all-cleansing blood!

‘They have no wine.’ At heaven's high Feast
That soft petition still hath place,
And bathes—so wills that Kingly Priest
Whose ‘Hour is come’—the worlds with Grace.

XXVII. DETACHMENT.

From sin but not alone from sin
That Bright One of the worlds was free;
Never there stirred her breast within,
That downward Creature-Sympathy

Which clouds the strong eyes that discern
Through all things, One, the All-True, All-just,
And bids the infirmer instinct yearn
To beauteous nothings writ in dust.

Clear shines o'er glooming waves afar
Yon cottage fire, as daylight dies,
How pure—till comes the evening star
To shame it from untainted skies!

O Mary, in thy Daughters still
Thine image pure, if pale, we find;
The crystal of the flawless will;
The soul irradiating the mind;

The heart where live, in memory sheathed,
But ghosts of mortal joy or grief
Like wood-scents through a Bible breathed
By some thin-pressed long-cherished leaf;

The tender strength, the bliss heaven-taught,
Unguessed by Time's distempered thrall;
The lucid depth of loving thought,
The peace divine encircling all.

In Him, the Unseen, their wealth they hoard:
They sit, in self-oblivion sweet
The Virgin-Spouses of their Lord,
Beside the Virgin-Mother's feet.

XXVIII. THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES.

The water changed to wine she saw:
She saw nought else of shapes around:
With such a trance of loving awe
That first of signs her spirit bound.

She saw in perspective benign
Whate'er that first of signs rehearsed,
That later chalice, and the wine
More changed, that slaked a holier thirst.

She saw calm homes of love and rest
The earthly life to heaven allied
The deaths sabbatical and blest
Of Saints that died as Joseph died.

She saw a world serene, august,
A world new-made, whose every part
Was fashioned, not of sinful dust,
But in, and from the Saviour's Heart.

She saw the stream of human kind
So long defiled with weeds and mud
In fontal pureness onward wind
To meet the eternal ocean flood

Within whose breast a love-star shook
More fair than he that from the skies,
As home their silent way they took,
Illlumed her never tearless eyes.

XXIX. FILIA MARIÆ.

One thought alone 'mid all this sea
Of vernal bliss disturbs my breast:
What have I suffered, Lord, for Thee,
Or how my love aright confessed?

Command me tasks that Love may show
He needs no violet-scented bowers;
Some pain to bear, some joy forego,
Some task, not chos'n, of arduous hours.

I mused upon Thy work and Thee:
Hardness I sought, and shunned delights:
Where blows the flower and sucks the bee
I found Thee not; I clomb the heights.

Them, too, I feared; to city-ways
I fled; hot court, and fevered stair:
There too were beauty, love, and praise:
The Saviour's bleeding steps were there.

XXX. EXPECTATIO.

A sweet exhaustion seems to hold
In spells of calm the shrouded eve:
The gorse itself a beamless gold
Puts forth: yet nothing seems to grieve.

The dewy chaplets hang on air;
The willowy fields are silver-grey;
Sad odours wander here and there;
And yet we feel that it is May.

Relaxed and with a broken flow
From dripping bowers low carols swell
In mellower, glassier tones, as though
They mounted through a bubbling well.

The crimson orchis scarce sustains
Upon its drenched and drooping spire
The burden of the warm soft rains;
The purple hills grow nigh and nigher.

Nature, suspending lovely toils,
On expectations lovelier broods,
Listening, with lifted hand, while coils
The flooded rivulet through the woods.

She sees, drawn out in vision clear,
A world with summer radiance drest
And all the glories of that year
Still sleeping in her sacred breast.

XXXI.

Whitens the green field, daisy-strewn;
A richer fragrance loads the breeze;
Full-flowering meadows sweep, tall-grown,
The bending boughs of greener trees.

Whitens the thorn, like yonder snow
That crowns, not clothes, the hills aloof:
Empurpled skies more darkly glow
Through chasms of denser forest roof.

The silver treble of the bird
O'erruns her music's graver base
That golden murmur always heard
That dins the universal space,

Commingled sound of insect swarm
And vagrant bee, and wandering stream,
And workings of the woodlands warm
By summer yearnings touched in dream.

O Nature, make thy children thine!
Erase the stain; burn out the blot;
Like her of Mothers most benign,
The sole that, loving, flatters not.

XXXII. ‘JESUS AND HIS MOTHER WERE THERE.’

Love, youthful love, that mean'st so well,
And spread'st thy wings to soar so high,
Yet, backward blown by gusts from hell
On desert sands so oft dost die!

For thee what help? From pride? from scorn?
Ah! love alone is love's defence,
True love, of love celestial born,
And nursed in caves of Reverence.

Childhood thrice-blest! thine every thought
Reveres superior mind or power
That, sown in darkness, may be wrought
From Reverence love's consummate flower!

A sinless man, a sinless mate
Walked, linked in God, o'er Eden's sward:
But He who links holds separate:—
Between them paced Whom both adored!

O Face so like thy Son's look forth
Through clouds that blot this mortal scene
And, teaching woman's spiritual worth,
The heart of man with fire make clean:

That so once more with spotless feet
Upon a world-wide Eden's sod
Humanity may stand complete
One image, dual-cast from God;

And, dual-crowned—like that fair hill
Parnassian, which from summits twain
Flashed back the morning bright and still
Echoing the Muses' vestal strain—

May sing the Heavenly Lover's praise
With voices twain, yet lost in one,
And learn that only when we raise
Our hearts, they beat in unison.

XXXIII. LUMEN NUPTIARUM.

Say, who is she that walks on air
Nor stains her foot with sinful earth?
The all-tender Vestal, chaste and fair,
In death more blameless than at birth.

Say, who is she serenely blest
That walks the dustier ways of life
With foot immaculate as her breast?
That Woman maid, the Christian Wife!

Her love, a full-blown rose, each hour
Its snowy bud regerminates;
The star of Eden lights her bower;
Her children's laughter cheers its gates.

Yet half she is, that wife—still bride—
Owes to that vestal never wed,
As Homes through Him are sanctified
Who had not where to lay His head.

XXXIV.

The golden day is dead at last,
And hiding all their blossoms white
In one deep shade the bowers are massed,
So feebly o'er them plays the light

Of those uncertain, moonless skies
Bewildered with a silver haze,
Through which the unnumbered starry eyes
Bend tearful down a trembling gaze.

Against the horizon's pallid line
Where western heaven with ocean blends,
Far seen yon solitary Pine
Its cloud-like canopy suspends.

Ah! hark, that Convent's chime! It swells
From dusky turrets far away:
To shepherds half asleep it tells
That Mary's daughters watch and pray.

XXXV.

If God for each fair action wrought
On earth, with wholly pure intent,
Should call an Angel out of nought
Thenceforth in heaven its monument,

To prove the all-fruitful strength and worth
Of pureness perfect; and to show
That life in heaven may owe its birth
To humblest Virtue tried below;

How often angel choirs would fleet
From heaven the shadowy gulf across,
Some death-delivered Soul to greet
Assoiled, ere death, from mortal dross;

Some Vestal from the cloister shade
Still pale, some village maid as pure,
That smiled to see her beauty fade,
Worked on for God in age obscure—

‘Hail, Mother of our Joy!’ how oft
In hearts that knew not earthly ties
That angel Salutation soft
Would wake the beautiful surprise,

As forward through the realms of light
That Soul, on angel-litter borne,
Made way, an eddy silver-bright
Through gold seas of the eternal morn!

XXXVI. ‘WHEN THOU HAST SET MY HEART AT LIBERTY.’

How narrow earthly loves, even those
Clouded the least by earthly stain!
What bars of Self around them close!
Not Death itself can burst that chain.

We love amiss; we sorrow worse;
Wan vintage of a barren sun
We drain around an ill-waked corse
In death-vaults of delight foregone.

O thou whose love to Him was knit
So near thee, yet so high above;
In whom to love was to submit,
In whom Submission meant but Love;

Whose heart great Love dilated so
That by His Cross, a Mother twice,
All men thy sons became; whose Woe
But crowned true Love's Self-Sacrifice;

Make thou the bosom, pure before,
Through grief more solid-pure to grow;
The lily vase that shook of yore
Make thou the lily filled with snow!

The thought of thee among the Blest
O'er earth a bliss snow-pure doth breathe:
Thy rest in heaven diffuses rest
O'er those who love and mourn beneath.

XXXVII. GRATIÆ PLENA.

If he of Angels first and best
Chief Ardour of the Seraph fires
More graces clasps than all the rest,
Perchance than all their ninefold choirs,

(That so proportioned worth and place
May wed, nor even war with odd)
What plenitude of conquering grace
Must fill the Mother of her God!

Their greatness stands in limits curbed
Of sequent rank and grade; but she
Is one and whole, a world full-orbed,
An Order sole, and Hierarchy:

Of things create both last and first;
Added, that so from Adam's crime
Her Son might save the race accursed;
Decreed before the birth of time.

Hail, Full of Grace! To eyes of men
Light shows not mid excess of light:
Thy glory mocks the angelic ken,
The peerless whiteness of thy white!

And yet 'twixt her and us but small
The distance:—finite it must be:
'Twixt her and God the interval
Is evermore infinity.

XXXVIII. VAS INSIGNE DEVOTIONIS.

O strong in prayer! our spirits bind
To God: our bodies keep from sin:
Live in our hearts that Christ may find
An incorrupt abode therein:

That He, the Eternal Spirit, He
Who overshadowed with His Grace
The depths of thy Humility
In us may have a resting-place.

Who love thee prosper! As a breeze
Thou waft'st them o'er the ways divine:
Strange heights they reach with magic ease
Through music-moulded discipline.

‘If I but touch His vesture's hem
I shall be healed, and strong, and free’—
Thou wert His Vesture, Mary! them
His virtue heals that reach to thee.

XXXIX. THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT.

How oft that Sadducean fool
That imped with feathers from the jay
As hard a heart, a brain as dull
As e'er were bubble-blown from clay,

How oft his half-shut eye had roved
From sacred page to page, and read
Those words that, unaffirming, proved
The Resurrection from the Dead!

Words plainer were there: ‘I shall go
To him; he cannot come to me’—
‘Though worms consume this Body, lo!
I in my flesh my God shall see.’

Such words the Saviour challenged not:
He willed to prove that at the core
Of well-known words to reverent Thought
There lurked a mine of unknown lore.

‘What texts avouch her greatness?’ Two,
For those the Letter's rind who pierce;
The Ancient Record and the New:
In Christ they meet; and Christ is hers.

‘The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’

XL. THE ‘SINGLE EYE.’

The spirit intricately wise
That bends above his ciphered scroll
Only to probe and analyse,
The self-involved and sunless soul

Has not the Truth he holds, though plain;
For Truth divine is gift, not debt:
Her living waters wouldst thou drain?
Let down the pitcher, not the net!

But they, the spirits frank and meek,
Nor housed in self, nor science-blind,
Who welcome Truths they did not seek;—
Truth comes to them in every wind.

Beside his tent's wide open door
With open heart, and open eye
The Patriarch sat, when they who wore
That triad type of God drew nigh.

The world of Faith around us lies
Like nature's world of life and growth:
Seeing to see it needeth eyes
And heart, profound and simple both.

XLI. MYSTICA.

As pebbles flung for sport, that leap
Along the superficial tide
But enter not those chambers deep
Wherein the jewel'd beds abide,

Such those light minds that, grazing, spurn
The surface text of Sacred Lore,
Yet ne'er its deeper sense discern
Its halls of mystery ne'er explore.

Ah! not for such the unvalued gems!
The priceless pearls of Truth they miss:
Not theirs the starry diadems
That light God's temple in the abyss!

Ah! not for such to gaze on her
That moves through all that empire pale;
At every shrine doth minister,
Yet never lifts her sacred veil!

‘The letter kills.’ Make pure thy Will;
So shalt thou pierce the Text's disguise:
Till then, revere the veil that still
Hides Truth from truth-affronting eyes.

XLII. BEATI QUI AUDIUNT VERBUM DEI.

When from the crowd that voice was raised
That blessed the Mother of the Lord
Not her the Son who loved her praised
But all who heard, and kept His word.

O answer meet! to her how dear
To her too great her crown to boast!
The meek were glad that praise to hear:
The meekest, loftiest, joyed the most.

Above her soul's pure mirror crept
No mist: no doubt within her stirred:
She asked not ‘who His words hath kept
Like her, the mother of the Word?’

Her tender heart rejoiced to think
That all who say, ‘Thy Will be mine,’
Without, or with the external link,
In heart bring forth the Babe divine.

Chief of the Prophets John might be,
Yet, but for that his happier place
In Jesus' kingdom, less than he
The least one in the realm of Grace.

The mother of Incarnate God
Some Prophet's mother seemed, alone:
His hour not yet was come: abroad
To noise her fame had noised his own.

XLIII. AUTHENTIC THEISM.

A trivial age with petty sneer
Rebukes a creed for it too large
And little deems how subtly near
To falsehood's blindest is its charge.

The authentic Thought of God at last
To it grows pale through Error's mist:
Upon that mist Man's image cast
Becomes the new God-Mechanist.

The vast Idea shrivels up:
Truth narrows with the narrowing soul:
Men sip it from the acorn's cup:
Their fathers drained the golden bowl.

Shrink, spelled and dwarfed, their earth, their skies;
Shrinks in their hand the measuring-rod;
With dim yet microscopic eyes
They chase a daily-dwindling God.

His temple, thus to crypt reduced
For ancient Faith has space no more
Or her, its Queen. To hearts abused
By sense, prime truths are true no more.

XLIV. ‘TESTE DAVID CUM SIBYLLA.’

(Plato.)

O Thou of amplest brow, and eye
Resplendent most with piercing beam,
Prime Teacher of antiquity
That through thy shadowy Academe

Didst walk, the boast of Grecian years,
Of man conversing and the Soul
Until the music of the spheres
Around thy listeners seemed to roll;

Thy theme was still the unsensuous Mind
That moulds and makes our worlds of sense,
The Truth in fleeting forms enshrined
Its own all-conquering evidence:

Olympian fancies, winged with speech
Descending lit that arduous theme
Like Pindan swans, each following each,
Adown some forest-darkened stream.

Ilyssus 'mid the reeds withheld
His wave to list a statelier ode
Than ever in that holy eld
From Sophoclean chorus flowed:

Man, man thou sang'st in strain heaven-taught,
Thy State's Exemplar, Type, and Plan,
Man, born of God's eternal Thought—
Ah, hadst thou heard of God made man!

XLV. ‘TESTE DAVID CUM SIBYLLA.’

(Plato.)

He looked on the transcendent light,
And, by the greatness of the fall
Measuring the unfallen Spirit's height
That Spirit deemed the body's thrall.

He knew the light, but not the love,
The sin, but not that Cross of shame
Which raised us sinless spheres above!
Perhaps in death that knowledge came

In death that vision o'er him stood
Which all atoned, and all sufficed,
That Vision of Incarnate God,
The Mother-maid, the Infant Christ!

Perhaps, where'er the heart is pure
In Gentile or in Christian lands,
Despite dim clouds of faith obscure
By dying beds that Vision stands

To ripen in a moment's space
Truth's harvest, slumbering long in seed,
And fit—to meet the Judge's face—
With love in fear the Spirit freed!

XLVI. ‘TESTE DAVID CUM SIBYLLA.’

(Idea Platonica.)

‘The everlasting hills present
God's Steadfastness to mortal ken:
His Ways the trackless firmament:
The deep His Counsels hid from men.’

What follows? All that meets our eyes
Now dimmed by life's distempered dream
Is revelation in disguise;
It shrouds, yet shows, the One supreme!

Throughout all worlds there liveth nought
But lived, unmade, unchangeable
For aye in God's creative Thought
Which cast Creation's glistening shell.

Him first, Him most, His works express:
But Nature's myriad-minded plan
Hath lesser meanings; and the less
Charm most the petty mind of man.

Poor captive of a sensuous heart,
That mind no longer by the whole
Interprets Nature's meaner part—
We live in surburbs of the soul!

O Death! fling back the gates of sense
That man, redeemed from thraldom base,
With glorified intelligence
At last may see his Maker's Face!

Then type to antitype shall yield:
Then Truth no more shall show reversed:
The golden side of nature's shield
Shall smite our vision as at first

When God His creatures bade to pass
Beneath their master's eye, and he,
Fresh from the Godhead, as through glass
Discerned in each its mystery;

Descried its supernatural law,
Inferred its place in nature's frame,
And, in the tongue of Gods, with awe
Assigned to each its destined Name.

XLVII. DEUS ABSCONDITUS.

He was no conqueror borne abroad
On all the fiery winds of fame
That over-sweeps a world o'er-awed
In ruin-heaps to write—a Name.

No Act triumphant crushed the foe:
No word of power redeemed the thrall:
By Suffering He prevailed that so
His Father might be all in all.

His Godhead veiled from mortal eyes
Showed forth that Father's Godhead still
As calm seas mirror starry skies
Because themselves invisible.

Thus Mary in the Son was hid:
That Son alone that Mother's boast;
She nothing said, she nothing did:
Her light in His was merged and lost.

XLVIII. THE VEIL.

For thirty years with her He lurked
As secret as the unrisen sun:
In three short years His Work He worked:
That work we know. The victory won,

Once more the veil descends, and shrouds
That trance of Love, the Forty Days:
Like mountains lost in luminous clouds
Their marvels cheat our yearning gaze.

The Saints who rose when Jesus died,
Lazarus, twice cast from nature's womb,
Hidden their after days abide
As Enoch's life or Moses' tomb.

The Work, the Work, no more, is told:
The lore man needs not shuns his sight:
Thy Work was this, to clothe in mould
Of Adam's race the Infinite.

Thy Motherhood thine endless Act
In this all lesser praise is drowned:
To this to add were to detract:
Sole-throned it bideth and self-crowned.

XLIX. ‘THE SECRET OF GOD IS WITH THEM THAT FEAR HIM.’

Flower of the darkness that unseen
With fragrance fill'st the vernal grove
Where hid'st thou? 'Mid the grasses green,
Or boughs that bar the blue above?

Thou bird that, darkling, sing'st a song
That shook the bowers of Paradise
Thou too art hid thy leaves among;
Thou sing'st unseen of mortal eyes.

Of her thou sing'st whose every breath
Sweetens a world too base to heed;
Of Him, Death's Conqueror, who from Death
Alone would take the crown decreed.

Thou sing'st that secret gifts are best;
That only like to God are they
Who keep God's Secret in their breast
And hide, as stars are hid by day.

L. JANUA CŒLI.

They seek not; or amiss they seek;
The coward soul, the captious brain:
To Love alone those instincts speak
Whose challenge never yet was vain.

True Gate of Heaven! As light through glass,
That God who might—not born of thee—
Have come, was pleased to earth to pass
Through thine unstained Virginity:

Lo! thus aright to know thy Son
Through knowledge comes of thee in part,
Interior Vision, Spirit-won,
High wisdom of the virgin heart.

Summed up in thee our hearts behold
The glory of created things:
From His, thy Son's, corporeal mould
Looks forth the eternal King of kings!

LI.

If sense of Man's unworthiness
With Nature's blameless looks at strife,
Should wake with wakening May, and press
New-born contentment out of life;

If thoughts of breed unblest and blind
Should stamp upon the springing flower,
Or blacker memories haunt the mind
As ravens haunt the ruined tower;

O then how sweet in heart to breathe
Those pure Judean gales once more;
From Bethlehem's crib to Nazareth
In heart to tread that Syrian shore!

To watch that star-like Infant bring
To one of soul as clear and white
May-lilies, fresh from Siloa's spring
Or Passion-flower with May-dews bright;

To follow, earlier yet, the feet
Of her the ‘hilly land’ who trod
With true love's haste, intent to greet
That aged saint beloved of God:

Before her like a stream let loose
The long vale's flowerage, winding, ran:
Nature resumed her Eden use;
And Earth was reconciled with Man!

LII. CAUSA NOSTRÆ LÆTITIÆ.

Whate'er is floral on the earth
To thee, O Flower, of right belongs,
Whate'er is musical in mirth,
Whate'er is jubilant in songs.

Childhood and springtide never cease
For him thy freshness keeps from stain:
Dew-drenched for him, like Gideon's fleece,
The dusty paths of life remain.

For all high thoughts thou bring'st to mind,
We love thee:—love thee better yet
For all that taint on human kind
Thy brightness helps us to forget!

Hope, Hope is Strength! That smile of thioe
To us is Glory's earliest ray!
Through Faith's dim air, O star benign,
Look down, and light our onward way!

LIII. STELLA MARIS.

I left at morn that blissful shore
O'er which the fruit-bloom fluttered free;
And sailed the wildering waters o'er,
Till sunset streaked with blood the sea.

My sleep the hoarse sea-thunders broke—
Death-visaged cliffs, with feet foam-hid
Leaned forth their brows through vapour-smoke
Like tower, and tomb, and pyramid.

In death-black shadow, ghostly white,
The breaker raced o'er foaming shoals:
From caverns cold as death all night
Came wailings as of suffering Souls.

At morn, through clearing mist the star
Of ocean o'er the billow rose:
Down dropped the elemental war;
Tormented chaos found repose.

Star of the ocean! dear art thou,
Ah! not to sea-worn men alone:
The suffering Church, when shines thy brow
Upon her penance, stays her moan:

The Holy Souls draw in their breath:
The sea of anguish rests in peace:
And from beyond the gates of death
Up swell the anthems of release.

LIV. AARONIS VIRGA.

Blossom for ever, blossoming Rod!
Thou didst not blossom once to die:
That Life which, issuing forth from God
Thy life enkindled runs not dry.

Without a root in sin-stained earth
'Twas thine to bud Salvation's flower:
No single soul the Church brings forth
But blooms from thee and is thy dower!

Rejoice, O Eve! thy promise waned;
Transgression nipt thy flower with frost:
But, lo! a Mother man hath gained
Holier than she in Eden lost.

LV. UNICA.

While all the breathless woods aloof
Lie hushed in noontide's deep repose,
That dove, sun-warmed on yonder roof,
Ah what a grave content she knows!

100

One note for her! Deep streams run smooth:
The ecstatic song of transience tells:
What depth on depth of loving truth
In that divine content there dwells!

All day with down-dropt lids I sat
In trance; the present scene forgone:
When Hesper rose, on Ararat,
Methought, not English hills, he shone.

Back to the ark the waters o'er
That primal dove pursued her flight:
A branch of that blest tree she bore
Which feeds God's Church with holy light.

I heard her rustling through the air
With sliding plume—no sound beside
Save the sea-sobbings everywhere,
And sighs of that subsiding tide.

LVI. REGINA PROPHETARUM.

She took the timbrel, as the tide
Rushed, refluent, down the Red Sea shore:
‘The Lord hath triumphèd,’ she cried:
Her song rang out above the roar

Of lustral waves that wall to wall
Fell back upon that host abhorred:
Above the gloomy watery pall
As eagles soar her anthem soared.

101

Miriam, rejoice! a mightier far
Than thou one day shall sing with thee!
Who rises, brightening like a star
Above yon bright baptismal sea?

That harp which David touched who rears
Heaven-high above those waters wide?
The Prophet-Queen! Throughout all years
She sings the Triumph of the Bride!

LVII.

Still on the gracious work proceeds,
The good, great tidings preached anew
Yearly to green enfranchised meads
And fire-topped woodlands flushed with dew.

Yon cavern's mouth we scarce can see;
Yon rock in gathering bloom lies meshed;
And all the wood-anatomy
In thickening leaves is over-fleshed.

That hermit oak, which frowned so long
Upon the spring with barren spleen,
Yields to the sinless Siren's song,
And bends above her goblet green.

Young maples, late with gold embossed
Lucidities of sun-pierced limes
No more surprise us merged and lost
Like prelude notes in deepening chimes.

102

Disordered beauties and detached
Demand no more a separate place:
The abrupt, the startling, the unmatched,
Submit to graduated grace;

While upward from the ocean's marge
The year ascends with statelier tread
To where the sun his golden targe
Finds, setting, on yon mountain's head.

LVIII. TURRIS DAVIDICA.

The towerèd City loves thee well,
Strong Tower of David's House! In thee
She hails the unvanquished citadel
That frowns o'er Error's subject sea.

With magic might that Tower repels
A host that breaks where foe is none,
No foe but statued Saints in cells
High-ranged and smiling in the sun.

There stands Augustin; Leo there;
And Bernard with a maiden face
Like John's; and, strong at once and fair,
That Spirit-Pythian, Athanase.

103

Upon thy star-surrounded height
God's Angel keepeth watch and ward;
And sunrise flashes thence ere night
Hath left dark street and dewy sward.

LIX. ‘TU SOLA INTEREMISTI OMNES HÆRESES.’

What tenderest hand uprears on high
The standard of Incarnate God?
Successive portents that deny
Her Son, who tramples? She who trod

Long since on Satan! Who were those
That, age by age, their Lord denied?
Their seats they set with Mary's foes:
They mocked the Mother as the Bride.

Of such was Arius; and of such
He whom the Ephesian Sentence felled:
Her Title triumphed. At the touch
Of Truth the insurgent rout was quelled:

Back, back the hosts of Hell were driven
As forth that sevenfold thunder rolled:
And in the Church's mystic Heaven
There was great silence as of old.

Nestorius.

Deipara.

104

LX. UT ACIES ORDINATA.

The watchman watched along the walls:
And lo! an hour or more ere light
Loud rang his trumpet. From their halls
The revellers rushed into the night.

There hung a terror on the air;
There moved a terror under ground;
The hostile hosts, heard everywhere,
Within, without, were nowhere found.

‘The Christians to the lions! Ho!’
Alas! self-tortured crowds, let be!
Let go your wrath; your fears let go:
Ye gnaw the net, but cannot flee.

Ye drank from out Orestes' cup;
Orestes' Furies drave you wild.
Who conquers from on high? Look up!
A Woman, holding forth a Child!

LXI.

As children when, with heavy tread,
Men sad of face, unseen before,
Have borne away their mother dead,
So stand the nations thine no more.

105

From room to room those children roam,
Heart-stricken by the unwonted black:
Their house no longer seems their home:
They search; yet know not what they lack:

Years pass: Self-Will and Passion strike
Their roots more deeply day by day;
Old kinsmen sigh; and ‘how unlike’
Is all the tender neighbours say:

And yet at moments, like a dream
A mother's image o'er them flits:
Like hers their eyes a moment beam;
The voice grows soft: the brow unknits:

Such, Mary, are the realms once thine
That know no more thy golden reign:
Hold forth from heaven thy Babe divine!
O make thine orphans thine again!

LXII. SEDES SAPIENTIÆ.

O that the wordy war might cease!
Self-sentenced Babel's strife of tongues:
Loud rings the arena. Athletes, peace!
Nor drown the wild-dove's Song of Songs.

Alas, the wanderers feel their loss:
With tears they seek—ah, seldom found—
That peace whose Volume is the Cross;
That peace which leaves not holy ground.

106

Mary, the peaceful soul loves thee!
A happy child not taught of Scribes
He stands beside the Church's knee;
From her the lore of Christ imbibes.

Hourly he drinks it from her face:
For there his eyes, he knows not how,
The face of Him she loves can trace,
And crowned with thorns the sovereign brow.

‘Behold! all colours blend in white!
Behold! all Truths have root in Love!’
So sings, half lost in light of light,
Her Song of Songs the mystic Dove.

LXIII. TRUTH.

Profane are they, and without ruth,
Unclean, unholy, and unjust,
Who, loving knowledge, love not Truth:
Such love is intellectual lust.

He loves not Truth who over-runs
Like hunting-ground her harvest store
Trampling the birthright of his sons;
Truth's gambler, staking ‘all’ on ‘more.’

Who Truth from Error scorns to sift;
Contemns that Truth enthroned in state,
God's Vestal keeping her sweet gift
In fruitfulness inviolate;

107

Who thirsts for truths of lesser place,
Discovered Fact, or Natural Law,
Yet spurns the supernatural base
Of Truth's whole kingdom without flaw:

For on the adamantine Rock
Of Truth, Revealed, and Spirit-proved
Stands Faith, and meets the warring shock
Of world on world with face unmoved,

Thrice blest because not ‘Flesh and Blood’
That knowledge certain and serene
To Peter taught of old, but God
Sole Teacher of the things unseen.

LXIV. IMPLICIT FAITH.

‘MULTUM NON MULTA.’

Of all great Nature's tones that sweep
Earth's resonant bosom, far or near,
Low-breathed or loudest shrill or deep
How few are grasped by mortal ear!

Ten octaves close our scale of sound:
Its myriad grades, distinct or twined,
Transcend our hearing's petty bound
To us as colours to the blind.

In Sound's unmeasured empire thus
The heights, the depths alike we miss:
Ah, but in measured sound to us
A compensating spell there is!

108

In holy music's golden speech
Remotest notes to notes respond:
Each octave is a world; yet each
Vibrates to worlds its own beyond.

Our narrow pale the vast resumes;
Our sea-shell whispers of the sea:
Echoes are ours of angel plumes
That winnow far infinity.

Clasp thou of Truth the central core!
Hold fast that Centre's central sense!
An atom there shall fill thee more
Than realms on Truth's circumference.

That cradled Saviour, mute and small,
Was God—is God while worlds endure!
Who holds Truth truly holds it all
In essence, or in miniature.

Know what thou know'st! He knoweth much
Who knows not many things: and he
Knows most whose knowledge hath a touch
Of God's divine simplicity.

LXV. MATER VIVENTIUM.

In vain thine altars do they heap
With blooms of violated May
Who fail the words of Christ to keep;
Thy Son who love not nor obey.

109

Their songs are as a serpent's hiss;
Their praise a poniard's poisoned edge;
Their offering taints, like Judas' kiss,
The shrine; their vows are sacrilege.

Sadly from such thy countenance turns:
Thou canst not stretch thy Babe to such
Albeit for all thy pity yearns
As greet Him with a leper's touch.

Who loveth thee must love thy Son:
Weak Love grows strong thy smile beneath;
But nothing comes from nothing; none
Can reap Love's harvest out of Death.

LXVI. GEUS NON SANCTA.

I toiled along the public path:
Loud rang the booths with knave and clown;
Now laughter peals, now cries of wrath
Assailed the suburb from the town.

Pleasure, the kennel Circe, brimmed
Her cup for him that passed. Hard by
Sabbathless labour, dust-begrimmed
Alternated the curse and sigh.

‘Alas,’ I said, ‘no God is here!
The World, the Flesh, rule here confest:’
I heard a voice; an Angel near
On sailed; an altar touched his breast.

110

He placed it by me, and I knelt;
Clamour and shout and dust were gone:
I prayed, and in my prayer I felt
The peace of God, and heard, ‘walk on;

‘Walk on: the Lands this hour that sleep
A sleep of storm, shall wake to pray
And, praying, rest; her Feasts shall keep;
Their long, sad years thenceforth a May!’

LXVII. MATER VENERABILIS.

Come from the midnight mountain tops,
The mountains where the panthers play:
Descend! the cowl of darkness drops;
Come fair and fairer than the day!

Our hearts are wounded with thine eyes:
They stamp thereon in words of light
The mystery of the starry skies;
The ‘Name o'er every name’ they write.

Come from thy Lebanonian peaks
Whose sacerdotal cedars nod
Above the world when morning breaks;
The Mountain of the House of God.

Weakness and Dream have passed like night;
Religion claims her ancient bound
On-borne in venerable might
By lions haled and turret-crowned.

111

LXVIII.

The sunless day is sweeter yet
Than when the golden sun-showers danced
On bower new-glazed or rivulet;
And Spring her banners first advanced.

By wind unshaken hang in dream
The wind-flowers o'er their dark green lair;
And those ensanguined cups that seem
Not bodied forms but woven of air.

Nor bird is heard nor insect flits:
A tear-drop glittering on her cheek
Composed but shadowed, Nature sits
Yon primrose not more staid and meek.

The light of pensive hope unquenched
On those pathetic brows and eyes,
She sits, by silver dew-showers drenched
Through which the chill spring odours rise.

Was e'er on human countenance shed
So sweet a sadness? Once: no more;
Then when his charge the Patriarch led
Dream-warned to Egypt's distant shore:

Down on her Infant Mary gazed;
Her face the angels marked with awe;
Yet 'neath its dimness, undisplaced,
Looked forth that smile the Magians saw.

112

LXIX. THE FOURTH DOLOUR.

(The Meeting on Calvary.)

She stands before Him on the Road:
He bears the Cross; He climbs the Steep:
Three times He sinks beneath His load:
He sinks to earth: she does not weep.

She may not touch that Cross whose weight
Against His will a stranger bears:
In heart to bear it, and to wait,
His upward footsteps, this is hers.

She may not prop that thorn-crowned Head:
The waves of men between them break:
Another's hand the veil must spread
Against that forehead and that cheek.

Her eyes on His are fastened. Lo!
There stand they, met on Calvary's height,
Twin mirrors of a single woe
Made by reflection infinite.

The sons of Sion round them rave:
The Roman trumpet storms the wind:
They goad him on with spear and stave:
He passes by: she drops behind.

113

LXX. REFUGIUM PECCATORUM.

Say, who are those that beat with brands
Like bandits on our palace-gate?
That storm our keep like rebel-bands?
That come like Judgment or like Fate?

Say, who are those that spurn by night
Our sumptuous floors with brazen shoon
And banquet halls whose latest light
Is lightning, or a dying moon?

Say, who are those that by our bed
Like giants tower in iron mail;
That press against the prostrate head
Their foot, and wind through heaven the flail?

The Sins are these! Sin-pasturing Past!
How in thy darkness they have grown
That seemed to die! How we at last
To pigmy size have shrunk, self-known!

Help, sinless Mother! Bid Him spare!
He loves us more—that Judge benign—
Than thou. 'Tis He that wills thy prayer:
From Him it comes, that love of thine!

114

LXXI. THE FIFTH DOLOUR.

(Beside the Cross.)

She stood in silence. Slowly passed
The hours whose moments dropped in blood:
Its frown the Darkness further cast:
She moved not: silently she stood.

No human sympathy she sought:
Her help was God, and God alone;
Not even the instinctive respite caught
From passionate gesture, sigh or moan.

Her silence listened. On the air
Like death-bells tolled that prime Decree
Which bade the Eternal Victim bear
Man's Sin primeval. Let it be!

The Women round her heard all day
The clash of arms, the scoffing tongue:
She heard the breaking of that spray
Whereon the fruit of Knowledge hung.

Behold the Babe of Bethlehem! Ay!
The Infant slumbered on thy breast;
And thou that heard'st His earliest cry
Must hear His ‘Consummatum est.’

115

LXXII. STABAT MATER.

She stood: she sank not. Slowly fell
Adown the Cross the atoning blood:
In agony ineffable
She offered still His own to God.

No pang of His her bosom spared;
She felt in Him its several power:
But she in heart His Priesthood shared:
She offered Sacrifice that hour.

‘Behold thy Son!’ Ah, last bequest!
It breathed His last farewell! The sword
Predicted pierced that hour her breast:
She stood: she answered not a word.

His own in John He gave. She wore
Thenceforth the Mother-crown of Earth.
O Eve! thy sentence too she bore;
That hour in sorrow she brought forth.

LXXIII. REGINA MARTYRUM.

That tie, the closest ever twined,
That linked a Creature with her God
All ties of man in one combined
When by His Cross that Creature stood.

116

In both, one Will all wishes quelled:
On one great Sire were fixed their eyes:
From sister hearts the death-stream welled:—
Twins of a single Sacrifice.

In death her Spouse, her Son in life,
Her wedding-garment was His blood:
It clasped her close enough a wife
To wear the crown of Widowhood.

O Love! alone thy topmost height
They tread who stand—thy clouds above—
Where all the rock-hewn paths unite
That branch from God, and lead to love!

LXXIV. THE SIXTH DOLOUR.

(Taken down from the Cross.)

The Saviour from the Cross they took:
Across His Mother's knee He lies:
She wept not but a little shook
As with dead hand she closed dead eyes.

The surface wave of grief we know:
By us its depths are unexplored:
She treads the still abyss below
Following the footsteps of her Lord.

Above her head the great floods roll:
Before her still He moves—her Hope:
And calm in heart of storm her Soul,
Calm as the whirlpool's central drop.

117

The Saviour from the Cross they took:
Across His Mother's knee He lay:
O passers by! be still and look!
That Twain compose one Cross for aye.

LXXV. THE SEVENTH DOLOUR.

(Before the Tomb.)

Before the Tomb the Mother sate
Amid the new-delved garden ground:
Her eyes upon its stony gate
Were fixed, while darkness closed around.

A wind above the olives crept:
It seemed the world's collected sigh:
That Mother's eyes their vigil kept:
She felt but this; her Lord was nigh.

Behind her leaning each on each
The Holy Women waited near:
Nor any spake of comfort: speech
Was slain by sorrow and by fear.

From realm to realm of night He passed,
That Soul which smote the dark to-day:
That Mother's eyes were settled fast
Upon the Tomb where Jesus lay.

118

LXXVI. MATER DOLOROSA.

From her He passed; yet still with her
The endless thought of Him found rest,
A sad but sacred branch of myrrh
For ever folded in her breast.

A Boreal winter void of light—
Such seemed her widowed days forlorn:
She slept; but in her breast all night
Her heart lay waking till the morn.

Sad flowers on Calvary that grew;
Sad fruits that ripened from the Cross;
These were the only joys she knew:
Yet all but these she counted loss.

Love strong as Death! She lived through thee
That mystic life whose every breath
From Life's low harpstring amorously
Draws out the sweetened name of Death.

Love stronger far than Death or Life!
Thy martyrdom was o'er at last:
Her eyelids dropped; and without strife
To Him she loved her spirit passed.

119

III. PART III. MARIÆ IN CŒLIS.

‘And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. [OMITTED] ‘And she brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod: and her son was taken up to God, and to His throne.’— Apocalypse xii. 1, 5.

121

I. THE ‘UNKNOWN GOD.’

Behind this vast and wondrous frame
Of worlds whereof we nothing know
Except their aspect and their name,
Beneath this blind, bewildering show

Of shapes that on the darkness trace
Transitions fair and fugitive
Lies hid that Power upon whose Face
No child of man shall gaze and live.

Like one on purple heights that stands
While mountain echoes round him roll
Screening his forehead with his hands
And following far through gulfs of soul

Some thought that still before him flies—
Thus, Power eternal and unknown,
We muse on Thine immensities
Yet find Thee in Thy Son alone.

Emanuel, God with us, in Him
We see the Unmeasured, and the Vast
Like mountain outlines, large and dim,
On lifted mists at sunrise cast.

122

‘The Word made Flesh!’ O Power Divine
Through Him alone we guess at Thee,
And deepliest feel that He is Thine
When throned upon His Mother's knee.

II. ASCENSIO DOMINI.

Rejoice, O Earth, thy crown is won!
Rejoice, rejoice, ye heavenly host!
And thou, the Mother of the Son,
Rejoice the first; rejoice the most!

Who captive led captivity,
From Hades' void circumference
Who raised the Patriarch Band on high,
There rules, and sends us graces thence.

Rejoice, glad Earth, o'er winter's grave
With altars wreathed and clarions blown;
And thou, the Race Redeemed, out-brave
The rites of Nature with thine own!

Rejoice, O Mary! thou that long
Didst lean thy breast upon the Sword—
Sad nightingale, the Spirit's song
That sang'st all night! He reigns, restored!

Rejoice! He goes, the Paraclete
To send! Rejoice! He reigns on high!
That Sword lies broken at thy feet!
His triumph is thy victory.

123

III. ASCENSIO DOMINI.

I take this reed—I know the hand
That wields it must ere long be dust—
And write upon the fleeting sand
Each tide o'er-sweeps, the words ‘I trust.’

And if that sand one day was stone
And stood in courses near the sky
For towers by earthquake overthrown
Or mouldering piecemeal, what care I?

Things earthly perish: life to death
And death to life in turn succeeds:
The Spirit never perisheth:
The chrysalis its Psyche breeds.

True life alone is that which soars
To Him who triumphed o'er the grave:
With Him on life's eternal shores
I trust one day a part to have.

Ah, hark! above the springing corn
That chime! in every breeze it swells!
Ye bells that wake the Ascension morn,
Ye give us back our Paschal bells!

124

IV.

A sudden sun-burst in the woods
But late sad Winter's palace dim!
O'er quickening boughs and bursting buds
Pacific glories shoot and swim.

As when some heart, grief-darkened long
Conclusive joy by force invades,
So swift the new-born splendours throng;
Such lustre swallows up the shades.

The sun we see not; but his fires
From stem to stem obliquely smite
Till all the forest aisle respires
The golden-tongued and myriad light:

The caverns blacken as their brows
With floral fire are fringed: but all
Yon sombre vault of meeting boughs
Turns to a golden fleece its pall

As o'er it breeze-like music rolls:
O Spring, thy limit-line is crossed!
O Earth, some orb of singing Souls
Brings down to thee thy Pentecost!

125

V. DOMINICA PENTECOSTES.

Clear as those silver trumps of old
That woke Judea's jubilee;
Strong as the breeze of morning, rolled
O'er answering woodlands from the sea

That Evangelic anthem vast
Which winds, like sunrise, round the globe,
Following that sunrise, far and fast
And trampling on his fiery robe.

Once more the Pentecostal torch
Lights on the courses of the year:
The ‘Upper Chamber’ of the Church
Is thrilled once more with joy and fear.

Who rears her brow from out the dust?
Who fixes on a world restored
A gaze like Eve's, but more august?
Who lifts it heaven-ward on her Lord?

It is the Birthday of the Bride!
The new begins; the ancient ends:
From all the gates of Heaven flung wide
The promised Paraclete descends.

He who o'ershadowed Mary once
O'ershades Humanity to-day;
And bids her fruitful prove in sons
Co-heritors with Christ for aye.

126

VI. DOMINICA PENTECOSTES.

The Form decreed of tree and flower
The Shape susceptible of life
Without the infused, vivific Power
Were but a slumber or a strife.

He whom the plastic Hand of God
Himself created out of earth
Remained a statue and a clod
Till Spirit infused to life gave birth.

So till that hour the Church. In Christ
Her awful structure, nerve and bone,
Though founded, shaped, and organized
Existed but in skeleton

Till down on that predestined frame,
Complete through all its sacred mould
That Pentecostal Spirit came,
The self-same Spirit Who of old

Creative o'er the waters moved:
Thenceforth the Church, made One and Whole,
Arose in Him, and lived, and loved;
His Temple she, and He her Soul.

127

VII.

Here, in this paradise of light,
Superfluous were both tree and grass:
Enough to watch the sunbeams smite
Yon white flower sole in the morass!

From his cold nest the skylark springs
Soars, pauses, sings; shoots up anew;
Attains his topmost height, then sings
Quiescent in his vault of blue.

With eyes half-closed I watch that lake
Flashed from whose plane the sun-sparks fly
Like Souls new-born that shoot and break
From thy deep sea, Eternity!

Ripplings of sunlight from the wave
Ascend the white rock high and higher;
Soft gurglings fill the satiate cave;
Soft airs amid the reeds expire.

All round the lone and luminous meer
The dark world stretches far and free
That skylark's song alone I hear;
That flashing wave alone I see.

O myriad Earth! Where'er a Word
Of thine makes way into the soul
An echo million-fold is stirred:
Of thee the part is as the whole!

128

VIII. REGINA CŒLI.

In some celestial realm we know
The God-man keeps His court sublime
As Adam ruled the sphere below
In that first Eden's sinless prime.

He too, that second Adam, hears
Those rivers four engird His bound;
Serene advance of sleepless years
With God's accomplished Counsels crowned,

Around Him, close as Eden leaves,
The Souls consummate hang in trance:
Like wind the Spirit among them weaves
Eternal song, or through the expanse

On-wafts, like snowy clouds high-piled
Those pilgrims of God's trackless Will,
The white hosts of the Undefiled
Whom love divine alone could fill.

The lustral mist for aye ascends:
All creatures mix secure from strife:
At last the Tree of Knowledge blends
Its branches with the Tree of Life.

An Eve partakes that Eden. She
Who decked His cradle shares His throne:—
The Solitudes of Deity
These, these are His, and His alone.

129

IX. FEST. SS. TRINITATIS.

Fall back, all worlds, into the abyss
That man may contemplate once more
That which He ever was Who is;
The Eternal Essence we adore.

Angelic hierarchies! recede
Beyond extinct Creation's shade—
What were ye at the first? Decreed:
Decreed, not fashioned! thought, not made!

Like wind the untold Millenniums passed:
Sole-throned He sat; yet not alone:
Godhead in Godhead still was glassed;
The Spirit was breathed from Sire and Son.

Prime Virgin, separate and sealed;
Nor less of social Love the root!
Dimly in lowliest shapes revealed;
Entire in every Attribute:

Thou liv'st in all things and around;
To Thee external is there nought;
Thou of the boundless art the bound;
And still Creation is Thy Thought.

In vain, O God, our wings we spread;
So distant art Thou—yet so nigh.
Remains but this when all is said
For Thee to live; in Thee to die.

130

X. FESTUM SS. TRINITATIS.

Like some broad flood whose conquering course
Shakes the dim forests night and day
On sweeps the prime Creative Force,
And re-creates the worlds alway.

The eternal Mind, the sole-born Thought
Shape-entering matter's stamp and mould,
Through all the spaces wonder-fraught
Speaks Law and Order as of old.

That Love which, ere it overflowed
And beat on lone Creation's shore
Issuing from Both with Both abode
Proceeds, abides, for evermore.

Yet man who—not in brow or breast
But soul, and reason, and free-will—
Imaged his Maker and expressed
Ignored that Triune Mystery still!

Here failed his science, failed as sight
Earth's motion fails to mark! Ah me!
Our eye can track the swallow's flight;
The circling sphere it cannot see!

And yet as Sense, abashed, down kneels
And wins from Science lore sublime
To kneeling science Faith reveals
Mysteries transcending space and time.

The Infinite remains unknown
Too vast for man to understand:
In Him, the ‘Woman's Seed,’ alone
We trace God's footprint in the sand.

131

XI. THRONUS TRINITATIS.

Each several Saint the Church reveres,
What is he but an altar whence
Some separate Virtue ministers
To God a separate frankincense?

Each beyond each, not made of hands
They rise, a ladder angel-trod:
Star-bright the last and loftiest stands:
That altar is the Throne of God.

Lost in the uncreated light
A Form all Human rests thereon:
His shade from that surpassing height
Beyond Creation's verge is thrown.

Him ‘Lord of lords, and King of kings,’
The chorus of all worlds proclaim:
‘He took from her,’ one angel sings
At intervals, ‘His human frame.’

XII. REGINA SANCTORUM OMNIUM.

He seemed to linger with them yet:
But late ascended to the skies
They saw—ah, how could they forget?—
The form they loved, the hands, the eyes.

132

From anchored boat, in lane or field
He taught; He blessed, and brake the bread;
The hungry filled; the afflicted healed;
And wept, ere yet He raised, the dead.

But when, like some supreme of hills
Whose feet shut out its summit's snow
That, hid no longer, heavenward swells
As further from its base we go,

Abroad His perfect Godhead shone
Each hour more plainly kenned on high
And clothed His Manhood with the sun
And, lifting, cleansed the adoring eye;

Then fixed His Church a deepening gaze
Upon His Saints. With Him they sate
And, burning in that Godhead's blaze,
They seemed that Manhood to dilate.

His were they: of His likeness each
Had grace some fragment to present
And nearer brought to mortal reach
Some imitable lineament.

XIII. ADVOCATA.

I saw, in visions of the night
Creation like a sea outspread
With surf of stars and storm of light
And movements manifold and dread.

133

Then lo, within a Human Hand
A Sceptre moved that storm above:
Thereon, as on the golden wand
Of kings new-crowned, there sat a Dove.

Beneath her gracious weight inclined
That Sceptre drooped. The waves had rest:
And Sceptre, Hand, and Dove were shrined
Within a glassy ocean's breast.

His Will it was that placed her there!
He at whose word the tempests cease
Upon that Sceptre planted fair
That peace-bestowing type of Peace!

XIV. EXALTAVIT HUMILES.

The Chief of Creatures lived unknown
Sharing her Maker's sacred cloud
Like some fair headland flower-bestrewn
That sleeps within its sea-born shroud.

The Brethren sought precedence: Christ
To them gave titles. He, their God,
For Him ‘the Son of Man’ sufficed:
The hidden way with Him she trod.

She died: the idols sank, and they
Those four great Heresies, whose pride
Successive blurred the fount of day
Her Son's Divinity denied:

134

As God, as Man, secure He reigned:
Then came her hour: then shone her crown
And theirs, that Saintly Court unstained
While guests of earth, by earth's renown.

Humility was crowned though late:
That boastful, pagan greatness fell:
And on their thrones the Meek ones sate
‘Judging the tribes of Israel.’

XV.

Where is the crocus now that first
When earth was dark and heaven was grey
A prothalamion flash, up burst?
Ah, then we thought not of the May!

The clear stream stagnates in its course;
Narcissus droops in pallid gloom;
Far off the hills of golden gorse;
A dusk Saturnian face assume.

The seeded dandelion dim
Casts loose its air-globe on the breeze;
Along the grass the swallows skim;
The cattle couch among the trees.

Yet ever lordlier loveliness
Succeeds the charm that cheats our hold:
The thorn assumes her snowy dress;
Laburnum bowers their robes of gold.

Down waves successive of the year
The season slides; but sinks to rise
With ampler view, as on we steer,
Of lovelier lights and loftier skies.

135

XVI.

A low ground-mist, the hills between
Measuring their intervals, distends
Ridge beyond ridge, the sylvan scene;
Far off the reddening river bends

From bridge to town. On hueless air
The moon suspends her pearly shell
Above the eastern ledges bare;
But sunset throngs yon western dell

That pants through amethystine mist
And gleams as though the Sons of God
Through golden ether stooped, and kissed
Some Syrian vale the Saviour trod!

The beatific Splendours wane:
The hills, of all that sweetness gone,
A roseate memory still retain:
Thou compline chime, peal on, peal on!

Of Him thou sing'st whose Blood erased
Earth's ancient stain by power divine;
Of them, that second Pair, who paced
That second Eden, Palestine.

136

XVII. IN CIVITATE SANCTIFICATA REQUIEVI.

In silence, like a ridge of snows
Slow reared in lands for ever calm,
On Sion's brow the Temple rose;
In stillness grew as grows the palm.

Far off, on ridges vapour-draped,
Was hewn and carved each destined stone:
Far off the axe the cedars shaped
Upon their native Lebanon.

So rose that Temple holier far
Incarnate Godhead's sacred shrine:
Round her there swelled no din of war:
The peace that girt her was divine.

The deep foundations of that fane
Were laid ere lived the hills and seas
In many a dread, unquarried vein
Of God's deep Will, and fixed Decrees.

High Queen of Peace! Her God possessed,
Her heart could feel no earthly want:
His kingdom, 'stablished in her breast,
Triumphant was, not militant:

And day by day more amply played
His love about its raptured thrall
Like some eternal sunset stayed
On cliff rich-veined, or mountain wall.

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XVIII. QUASI CEDRUS EXALTATA SUM IN LIBANO.

Behold! I sought in all things rest:
My Maker called me: I obeyed:
On me He laid His great behest:
In me His tabernacle made.

The world's Creator thus bespake
‘My Salem be thy heritage:
Thy rest within mine Israel make:
In Sion root thee, age by age.’

Within the City well-beloved
Thenceforth I grew from flower to fruit:
And in an ancient race approved
Behold thenceforth I struck my root.

Like Carmel's cedar, or the palm
That gladdens 'mid Engaddi's dew
Or Plane-tree set by waters calm
I stood, and round my fragrance threw.

Behold! I live where dwells not sin:
I breathe in climes no foulness taints:
I reign in God's fair Court, and in
The full assembly of His Saints.

Ecclesiasticus xxiv.

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XIX. SAPIENTIA.

My flowers are flowers of gladness: mine
The boughs of honour and of grace:
Pure as the first bud of the vine
My fragrance freshens all the place.

The Mother of fair Love am I:
With me is Wisdom's name and praise:
With me are Hope, and Knowledge high,
And sacred Fear, and peaceful days.

Through garden plots my course I took
To bathe the beds of herb and tree:
Then to a river swelled my brook:
Anon that river was a sea.

More high that sea shall rise and shine
Far off, a prophet-beam of morn;
Because my doctrine is not mine
But light of God for Seers unborn.

Ecclesiasticus xxiv.

XX. BEATI MITES.

Thy song is not the song of morn
O thrush, but calmer and more strong;
While sunset woods around thee burn
And echoing stems thy strain prolong.

139

O songstress of the thorn whereon
As yet the white but streaks the green
Sing on! sing on! Thou sing'st as one
That sings of what his eyes have seen!

In thee some Seraph's rapture tells
Of joys we guess not! Heaven draws near:
I hear the immortal City's bells:
The triumph of the Blest I hear.

The whole wide earth, to God heart-bare
Basks like some happy Umbrian vale
By Francis trodden and by Clare
When anthems sweetened every gale

When Greatness thirsted to be good
When faith was meek and love was brave
When hope by every cradle stood
And rainbows spanned each new-made grave.

XXI. SINE LABE ORIGINALI CONCEPTA.

Her foot is on the Lord of Night:
On Heaven, not him, are fixed her eyes:
That foot is, as a lily, light;
Not less that Serpent writhes and dies!

O Eve, he dies, that tempter fell!
O Earth, that pest whose poison-spume
Exasperate with the fires of hell
Thy blood envenomed, meets his doom!

140

But whence the conquering puissance? Lo!
That Woman clasps the ‘Woman's Seed:’
That Infant quells the infernal foe:
Messiah triumphs: His the deed!

The weight she feels not she transmits:
The weight of worlds her arms sustain:
Who made the worlds—in heaven Who sits—
Through her that foe hath touched and slain!

XXII. SINE LABE ORIGINALI CONCEPTA.

Could she, that Destined One, could she
On whom His gaze was stayed for aye
Transgress like Eve, partake that Tree
Become, like her, the Dragon's prey?

Had He no Pythian shaft that hour
Her Son—her God—to pierce that Foe
Which strove her greatness to devour,
Eclipse her glories? Deem not so!

He saw her in that First Decree:
He saw the Assailant; sent the aid:—
Filial it was, His love for thee
Ere thou wert born; ere worlds were made.

141

XXIII. SINE LABE ORIGINALI CONCEPTA.

When man gives up the ghost, behold,
Honouring his God's Decree august
His body melts: the mortal mould
Revisiteth its native dust.

The bulwarks of the breast give way:
Those eyes that glorying watched the sun:
Each atom-speck of mortal clay
Foregoes its nature—all save one.

A something—germ or power—survives,
That seed which linked, from birth to death,
The structure's myriad cyclic lives
That remnant never perisheth!

That seed reserved, too fine, too small
For eye to scan, for chance to mar
Shall soar to meet God's trumpet-call,
Re-clad, and glittering like a star.

With Man so fared it at the Fall:
The Race lay dead: She did not die:
One seed survived—the hope of all—
Thy pledge, Redeemed Humanity!

142

XXIV. SINE LABE ORIGINALI CONCEPTA.

Met in a point the circles twain
Of temporal and eternal things
Embrace, close linked. Redemption's chain
Drops thence to earth its myriad rings.

In either circle, from of old
That point of meeting stood decreed;
Twin mysteries cast in one deep mould
‘The Woman,’ and ‘the Woman's Seed.’

Mary, long ages ere thy birth
Resplendent with Salvation's Sign
In thee a stainless hand the earth
Put forth, to meet the Hand Divine!

The Word made Flesh; the Way; the Door;
The link that dust with Godhead blends!
Through Him the worlds their God adore:
Through thee that God to man descends.

The Incarnation.

XXV. SINE LABE ORIGINALI CONCEPTA.

A soul-like sound, subdued yet strong,
A whispered music, mystery-rife,
A sound like Eden airs among
The branches of the Tree of Life—

143

At first no more than this; at last
The voice of every land and clime
It swept o'er Earth a clarion blast:
Earth heard, and shook with joy sublime.

Mary! thy triumph was Earth's own!
In thee she saw her prime restored:
She saw ascend a spotless Throne
For Him, her Saviour, and her Lord.

First trophy of all-conquering Grace
First victory of that Blood all pure
Of man's once fair, but fallen Race,
Thou stood'st, the monument secure.

The Church had spoken. She that dwells
Sun-clad with beatific light,
From Truth's uncounted citadels
From Sion's Apostolic height

Had stretched her sceptred hands, and pressed
The seal of Faith, defined and known,
Upon that Truth till then confessed
By Love's instinctive sense alone.

XXVI. FREMUERUNT GENTES.

The sordid World, insane through pride
Masking her sin in virtue's name
Rejects, usurps, self-deified,
The Immaculate Mother's sacred claim.

144

‘The Earth is mine, and Earth's desires:
My Science reigns from zone to zone:
I warm my hands o'er Nature's fires;
I reap the fields those hands have sown:

‘From depths unknown I crept unseen
Through worm and beast to Man's estate:
My hands are clean: I rule, a Queen
Immortal and Immaculate.’

Thus boasteth Pride with brazen brow;
That Pride which still ‘believes a lie’:—
The counter-boast of Grace art thou,
Immaculate Humility!

Therefore, like Western hill that flings
O'er sunset vales its gradual shade
Thy power shall wax while sensuous things
Dissolve, and earthly grandeurs fade.

In the world's eve thy Star shall flash
Through reddening skies that cease to weep
While kings to earth their sceptres dash
And angel bands the harvest reap.

XXVII. THE RAINBOW.

All-glorious shape that fleet'st wind-swept
Athwart the empurpled pine-girt steep,
That, sinless, from thy birth hast wept,
All-gladdening, till thy death must weep;

145

That in eterne ablution still
Thine innocence in shame dost shroud
And, washed where stain was none, dost fill
With light thy penitential cloud;

Illume with peace our glooming glen
O'er-arch with hope yon distant sea
To angels whispering and to men
Of her whose lowlier sanctity

In God's all-cleansing freshness shrined
Renounced all pureness of her own,
And aye her lucent brow inclined
God's ‘Handmaid’ meek, before His throne.

XXVIII. ANCILLA DOMINI.

The crown of Creatures, first in place,
Was, of all creatures, creature most:
By nature nothing; all by grace;
Redemption's first and loftiest boast.

Handmaid of God in heart and will
Without His life she seemed a death
A void that He alone could fill
A word suspended on His breath.

Yet—void and nothing—she in Him
The Creature's sole perfection found;
She was the great Rock's shadow dim;
She was the silence not the sound.

146

On golden airs, by Him upheld,
She knelt, a soft Subjection mute
A hushed Dependance, tranced and spelled,
Still yearning towards the Absolute.

She was a sea-shell from the deep
Of God; her function this alone
Of Him to whisper as in sleep,
In everlasting undertone.

This hour on Him her eyes are set!
And those who tread the earth she trod
Like her themselves in her forget
And her remember but in God.

XXIX.

Brow-bound with myrtle and with gold
Spring, sacred now from blasts and blights,
Lifts high in firm, untrembling hold
Her chalice of fulfilled delights.

Confirmed around her queenly lip
The smile late wavering, on she moves;
And seems through deepening tides to step
Of steadier joys and larger loves.

The stony Ash itself relents,
Into the blue embrace of May
Sinking, like old impenitents
Heart-touched at last; and, far away,

The long wave yearns along the coast
With sob suppressed, like that which thrills,
Whilst o'er the altar mounts the Host,
Some chapel on the Irish hills.

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XXX. CORPUS CHRISTI.

Rejoice, thou Church of God! be glad,
This day triumphant here below!
He cometh, in lowliest emblems clad;
Himself He cometh to bestow!

That Body which thou gav'st, O Earth
He gives thee back—that Flesh, that Blood—
Born of the Altar's mystic birth;
At once thy Worship and thy Food.

He who of old on Calvary bled
On all thine altars lies to-day
A bloodless Sacrifice, but dread
The Lamb in heaven adored for aye.

His Godhead on the Cross He veiled;
His Manhood here He veileth too:
But Faith has eagle eyes unscaled,
And Love to Him she loves is true.

‘I will not leave you orphans. Lo!
While lasts the world with you am I.’
Saviour! we see Thee not; but know
With burning hearts that Thou art nigh!

He cometh! Blue Heaven, thine incense breathe
O'er all the consecrated sod;
And thou, O Earth, with flowers enwreathe
The steps of thine advancing God!

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XXXI. CORPUS CHRISTI.

What music swells on every gale?
What heavenly Herald speedeth past?
Vale sings to vale, ‘He comes; all hail!’
Sea sobs to sea, ‘He comes at last.’

The Earth bursts forth in choral song;
Aloft her ‘Lauda Sion’ soars;
Her myrtle boughs at once are flung
Before a thousand Minster doors.

Far on the white processions wind
Through wood and plain and street and court:
The kings and prelates pace behind
The King of kings in seemly sort.

The incense floats on Grecian air
Old Carmel echoes Calpè's chant,
In every breeze the torches flare
That curls the waves of the Levant.

On Ramah's plain in Bethlehem's bound
Is heard to-day a gladsome voice:
‘Rejoice,’ it cries, ‘the Lost is found!
With Mary's joy, O Earth, rejoice!’

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XXXII. THE TWO LAST GIFTS.

‘Behold thy Mother!’ From the Cross
He gave her—not to one alone:
We are His Brethren; unto us
He gave a Mother as to John.

Behold the greatest gift of Christ
Save that wherein Himself He gives,
The wonder-working Eucharist,
Sole life of each that truly lives:

Mysterious Bread not joined and knit
With him that eats, like mortal food,
But, fire-like, joining him with It
And blending with the Church of God!

Mary! from thee the Saviour took
That Flesh He gives! The mercies twain
Like streams of a divided brook
But separate to meet again.

XXXIII. DOMUS AUREA.

‘Wisdom hath built herself a House,
And hewn her out her pillars seven:’
Her wine is mixed: her guests are those
Who share the harvest-home of heaven.

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The fruits upon her table piled
Are gathered from the Tree of Life:
Around are ranged the undefiled,
And those that conquered in the strife.

Who tends the guests? Who smiles away
Sad memories? bids misgiving cease?
A crowned one countenanced like the day
The Mother of the Prince of Peace!

Proverbs ix. 1.

XXXIV.

Pleasant the swarm about the bough;
The meadow-whisper round the woods;
And for their coolness pleasant now
The murmur of the falling floods.

Pleasant beneath the thorn to lie
And let a summer fancy loose;
To hear the cuckoo's double cry;
To make the noontide sloth's excuse.

Panting, but pleased, the cattle stand
Knee-deep in water-weed and sedge
And scarcely crop that greener band
Of osiers round the river's edge.

But hark! Far off the south wind sweeps
The golden-foliaged groves among
Renewed or lulled, with rests and leaps—
Ah! how it makes the spirit long

To drop its earthly weight and drift
Like yon white cloud, on pinions free
Beyond that Mountain's purple rift
And o'er that scintillating sea!

151

XXXV. FEST. ASSUMPTIONIS.

The mother of the heavenly Child
Who made the worlds, and who redeemed,
The maid and mother undefiled
She died: or else to die she seemed.

Once more above the late-entombed
They bent. What found they? Vacant space:
To heaven had Mary been assumed
And only flowers were in the place.

O happy earth! Elected sphere!
Hope of that starry host above!
Thou too thy Maker's voice shalt hear;
Thou too thy great Assumption prove!

The earth shall be renewed: the skies
Shall bloom with glories unrevealed:
Each season new but typifies
The wonders then to be unsealed.

Revives, each spring, a world that died:
A world by summer's store increased
Shall hear ere long that mandate wide
‘Prepare the glad Assumption Feast!’

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XXXVI. ELIAS AND ENOCH.

O thou that rodest up the skies,
Assumed ere death, on steeds of fire
That, rapt from earth in mortal guise
Some air immortal dost respire;

That, ambushed in the enshrouding sheen,
In quiet lulled of soul and flesh,
With one great thought of Him, the Unseen,
Thy ceaseless vigil dost refresh;

Old lion of Carmelian steeps!
Upon God's mountain, where, O where,
Or couchant by His unknown deeps,
Mak'st thou thine everlasting lair?

Hast thou, that earlier Seer beside
Who ‘walked with God, and was not,’ him
By contemplation glorified
When faith, in shallower hearts, grew dim,

Hast thou—despite corporeal bars—
A place among those Hierarchies,
Who fix on Mary's Throne, like stars,
The light of never-closing eyes?

Behold, there is a debt to pay!
With Enoch hid thou art on high:
Yet both shall back return one day,
To gaze once more on earth, and die.

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XXXVII. FEST. DE MONTE CARMELO.

Carmel, with Alp and Apennine
Low whispers in the wind that blows
Beneath the Eastern stars, ere shine
The lights of morning on their snows.

Of thee, Elias, Carmel speaks,
And that white cloud so small at first
Her Type, that neared the mountain peaks
To quench a dying nation's thirst.

On Carmel like a sheathed sword
Thy monks abode till Jesus came;
On Carmel then they served their Lord;
Then Carmel rang with Mary's name.

Blow over all the garden; blow
O'er all God's garden of the West
Balm-breathing Orient! Whisper low
The secret of thy spicy nest!

‘Who from the Desert upward moves
Like cloud of incense onward borne?
Who moving, rests on Him she loves?
Who mounts from regions of the Morn?

‘Behold! The apple-tree beneath—
There where of old thy Mother fell,
I raised thee up. More strong than Death
Is Love; more strong than Death or Hell.’

Cant. viii. 5, iii. 6.

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XXXVIII. VAS SPIRITUALE.

High, wingèd Heart, and crowned with fire!
O winged with pinions of the morn
O crowned with flames whose every spire
Bears witness to that crown of thorn!

Fair Dove of God, that, still at rest,
On speed'st in never wavering flight
Winging the illimitable Breast—
The Omnipresent Infinite;

We stagnate as in seas of lead,
Ice-cold, or warmed with earthly fires:
O that like thine our souls were fed
With sun-like yet serene desires!

A vase of quenchless love thou art
Drawn from that boundless Breast divine:—
O that in thee, on-rushing Heart,
Might rest, one hour, this heart of mine!

XXXIX.

Sing on, wide winds, your anthem vast!
Man's ear is richer than his eye:
Upon the eye no shape can cast
Such impress of Infinity.

And thou, my Soul, thy wings of might
Put forth: thou too, one day shalt soar
And, onward borne in heavenward flight,
The starry universe explore;

155

Breasting that breeze which waves the bowers
Of Heaven's bright forest never mute
Whereof perchance this earth of ours
Is but the feeblest forest-fruit.

Of all those worlds unnumbered none
There lives but from that Blood all pure
Ablution, or its crown, hath won;
Its state redeemed, or state secure.

‘The Spirit bloweth where He wills’—
O Effluence of that Life Divine
Which wakes the Universe, and stills,
In Thy strong refluence make us Thine!

XL. CŒLI ENARRANT.

Sole Maker of the Worlds! They lay
A barren blank a void a nought
Beyond the ken of solar ray
Or reach of archangelic thought.

Thou spak'st; and they were made! Forth sprang
From every region of the abyss
Whose deeps, fire-clov'n, with anthems rang,
The spheres new-born and numberless.

Thou spak'st: upon the winds were found
The astonished Eagles. Awed and hushed
Subsiding seas revered their bound;
And the strong forests upward rushed.

156

Before that Vision angels fell
As though the Face of God they saw;
And all the panting Miracle
Found rest within the arms of Law.

Perfect, O God, Thy primal plan,
That scheme frost-bound by Adam's sin:
Create, within the heart of Man,
Worlds meet for Thee; and dwell therein.

From Thy bright realm of Sense and Nature
Which flowers enwreathe and stars begem,
Shape Thou Thy Church; the crownèd Creature;
The Bride; the New Jerusalem!

XLI. CARO FACTUS EST.

When from beneath the Almighty Hand
The suns and systems rushed abroad
Like coursers which have burst their band
Or torrents when the ice is thawed;

When round in luminous orbits flung
The great stars gloried in their might;
Still, still a bridgeless gulf there hung
'Twixt Finite things and Infinite.

That crown of light Creation wore
Was girdled by the abysmal black;
And all of natural good she bore
Confessed her supernatural lack.

157

For what is Nature at the best?
An arch suspended in its spring;
An altar step without a priest;
A throne whereon there sits no king.

As one stone-blind that fronts the morn
The World before her Maker stood
Uplifting suppliant hands forlorn,
God's creature yet how far from God!

O Shepherd Good! The trackless deep
He pierced, that Lost One to restore!
His Universe, a wildered sheep,
Upon His shoulder home He bore!

That Universe His Priestly robe,
The Kingly Pontiff raised on high
The worship of the starry globe:—
The gulf was bridged, and God was nigh.

XLII. CONDESCENSIO.

When was it that in act began
That Condescension from on high
Consummated in God made Man,
Its shrine for all eternity?

'Twas when the Eternal Father spake,
The Eternal Son in act replied:
When sudden forth from darkness brake
The new-shaped worlds on every side.

158

Instant that All-Creative Power
A meek, sustaining Power became,
A Ministration hour by hour
From death preserving Nature's frame.

Instant into Creation's breast
Nor merged nor mixed He passed, and gave
Continuance to the quivering guest
That else had found at birth its grave.

In finite mansions He, the Immense,
In service reigning, made abode,
Bore up—a Law, a Providence—
The weight of worlds, ‘His people's load.’

He came once more—not then to reign;
In servant's form to serve, and die
The ‘Lamb before the ages slain,’
‘The Woman's Seed’ of prophecy.

XLIII. THE CREATED WISDOM.

Created Wisdom at the gate
Of Heaven's eternal House, I played:
The Eternal Wisdom Uncreate
Beheld me ere the worlds were made.

I danced the void abyss above:
Of lore unwrit the characters
I traced with wingèd feet, and wove
The orbits of the unshaped stars.

159

I flashed—a Thought in light arrayed—
Beneath the Eternal Wisdom's ken:
When came mine hour I lived, and played
Among the peopled fields of men.

Blessed is he that keeps my ways,
That stands in reverence on my floor,
That seeks my praise, my word obeys,
That waits and watches by my door.

Proverbs viii. 27—34.

XLIV. REGINA ANGELORUM.

(Evangelism in Cœla.)

Ere yet mankind was made; ere yet
The sun and she that rules the night
Were in their heavenly stations set,
God's Sons were playing in His sight.

Age after age those armies vast
In winding line had upward flown
Yet ne'er their shadows higher cast
Than on the first step of the Throne

And downward through the unsounded space
If those had sunk who soared above
They ne'er had found the buried base
Of Godhead's Condescending Love.

Then He, the God Who made them, proved:
For, high and higher as they soared
Hymning the Eternal Son beloved
The God from God, and Lord from Lord,

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He showed them, in that Form decreed,
Their God made man—man's hope and trust—
‘The Woman, ’and ‘The Woman's Seed,’
He showed; the Unbounded bound in dust.

As when from some world-conquering height
The shepherd sees, ere risen the sun,
His advent clothe the cloud with light
Before them thus that Vision shone:

And while, in wonder half half fear,
That Child, that Mother fixed their eye,
He bade those heavenward hosts revere
Their God in His Humility.

Set was that Infant as a sign:—
In endless bliss confirmed were they
Who hailed that hour the Babe Divine;
Self-sentenced those who turned away.

XLV. REGINA ANGELORUM.

(Spes Cœlestis.)

Their Trial past, more near the Throne,
And rapt thenceforth to holier skies,
Still on that Maid and Babe foreshown
The Elect of Angels fixed their eyes.

A Spirit-galaxy they hung;
A Cross unmeasured, limned in fire
And instinct-shaped, that swayed and swung
On winds of unfulfilled desire.

161

They worshipped Him, that God made Man;
To Him they spread their hands in power:
Unmarked the exhausted centuries ran:
That trance millennial seemed an hour.

'Twixt Finite things and Infinite
They saw the Patriarch's Ladder thrown;
Saw One Who o'er it moved in light:
They saw, and knelt with foreheads prone.

Make answer, sinless Angels, say
Ye who that hour your God adored
Less strong, less dear, is she this day,
That Mother of your destined Lord?

XLVI. REGINA ANGELORUM.

(In Cœlo Coronata.)

Angelic City in the skies
Not built of stones but Spirits pure
Irradiate by the Eternal Eyes,
And in the Eternal Love secure;

Angelic City, selfless chaste
By Him thou watch'st upholden still,
That neither Future know'st, nor Past
Tranced in thy God's all-present Will;

Thy mind a mirror sphered of gold
Wherein alone His splendours shine;
Thy heart a vase His Hand doth hold
That yields to Him alone its wine;

162

For one brief moment proved and tried;
Thenceforth man's help in trial's stress;
Bright Sister of the Church—the Bride—
The elder Sister, yet the less:

O like, unlike! O crownèd Twain!
Celestial both, yet one terrene;
Behold, ye sing the same glad strain;
Ye glory in the self-same Queen!

XLVII. MULIER AMICTA SOLE.

A Woman ‘clothèd with the sun,’
Yet fleeing from the Dragon's rage!
The strife in Eden-bowers begun
Swells upward to the latest age.

That Woman's Son is throned on high;
The angelic hosts before Him bend:
The sceptre of His empery
Subdues the worlds from end to end.

Yet still the sword goes through her heart
For still on earth His Church survives:
In her that Woman holds a part:
In her she suffers, and she strives.

Around her head the stars are set;
A dying moon beneath her wanes:
By Death hath Death been slain: and yet
The Power accurst awhile remains.

163

Break up, strong Earth, thy stony floors
And snatch to penal caverns dun
That Dragon from the pit that wars
Against the Woman and her Son!

Rev. xii. 1.

‘And her Child was caught up unto God, and to His Throne’ (Apoc. xiv. 5).

XLVIII.

Regent of Change, thou waning Moon
Whom they, the sons of night, adore
Her foot is on thee! Late or soon
Heap up upon the expectant shore

The tides of Man's Intelligence;
Or backward to the blackening deep
Remit them! Knowledge won from Sense
But sleeps to wake and wakes to sleep.

Where are the hands that reared on high
Heaven-threat'ning Babel? where the might
Of them, that giant progeny
The Deluge dealt with? Lost in night.

The child who knows his creed doth stretch
A sceptred hand o'er Space and hold
The end of all those threads that catch
In wisdom's net the starry fold.

The Sabbath comes: the work-days six
Go by. Meantime, of things to be
O Salutary Crucifix
We clasp the burning heart in thee:

We clasp the end that knows no end;
The Love that fears no lessening moon;
The Truth wherein all mysteries blend;
His Truth, His word—the One Triune.

164

XLIX. OTHER SHEEP I HAVE.

Fire-breathing concourse of the Stars
That tremble as with Love's delight
How dungeon-girt by custom's bars
How wrapped and swathed in error's night

His soul must be who nightly lifts
On you his wide and wandering eyes
Yet doubts that ye partake the gifts
Bequeathed by Calvary's Sacrifice!

Lift up your heads, Eternal Gates
Of God's great Temple in the sky!
That Blood your lintels consecrates:—
The Avenging Angel passes by!

The King of Glory issues forth:
The King of Glory enters in:
That Blood which cleansed from sin our earth
Or cleansed your spheres, or kept from sin.

L.

Is this, indeed, our ancient earth?
Or have we died in sleep and risen?
Has earth, like man, her second birth?
Rises the palace from the prison?

Hills beyond hills ascend the skies;
O'er winding valleys heaven-suspended,
Huge forests rich as sunset's dyes
With rainbow-braided clouds are blended.

165

What means it? Glory, sweetness, might?
Not these but something holier far;
Shadows of Him, that Light of Light
Whose priestly vestment all things are.

The veil of sense transparent grows:
God's Face shines out that veil behind
Like yonder sea-reflected snows—
Here man must worship, or be blind.

LI.

No ray of all their silken sheen
The leaves first fledged have lost as yet:
Unfaded, near the advancing queen
Of flowers, abides the violet.

The rose succeeds; her month is come;
The flower with sacred passion red:
She sings the praise of martyrdom
And Him for whom His martyrs bled.

The perfect work of May is done:
Hard by, a new perfection waits:
The twain, a sister and a nun,
A moment parley at the grates.

The whiter Spirit turns in peace
To hide her in the cloistral shade:
'Tis time that you should also cease,
Slight carols in her honour made.

166

EPILOGUE. THE SON OF MAN.

I gazed—it was the Paschal night—
In vision on the starry sphere:
Like suns the stars made broad their light:
Then knew I Earth to Heaven drew near.

The Thrones of Darkness down were hurled;
The veil was rent; the bond was riven:
Then knew I that Man's little world
Had reached its home—the heart of heaven.

Made strong by God, mine eyes with awe
Still roved from star-changed sun to sun
That ringed the earth in ranks, and saw
A Spirit o'er each, that stood thereon.

And, clasped by every Spirit, stood
More high, the Venerable Sign:
Then knew I that the Atoning Blood
Had reached that sphere; the Blood Divine.

From orb to orb an anthem passed;
‘The Blessing of the Lord of All
Hath reached us from the least and last
Of stars that light the Heavenly Hall;

‘For He, that Greatest, loves the Least;
Puts down the mighty; lifts the low:
On Earth began His Bridal Feast:
Our Triumph is its overflow!’

167

Then Earth, that great ‘New Earth’ foretold,
Assumed those glories long her due:
Or were they hers indeed of old
Though veiled till then from mortal view?

While—with her changing—far and wide
Those worlds around her, blent in one,
Became that ‘City of the Bride’
Which needs no light of moon or sun.

Their splendour had not suffered change
As, kenned through myriad senses new,
Self-radiant street, and columned range
To one unmeasured Temple grew.

Ere long through all that throbbing frame
Of things beheld and things unseen
Rolled forth that Name which none can name
Save those that breathe not clime terrene.

And down that luminous Infinite
I saw an Altar and a Throne;
And, near to each, a Form, all light
That, resting, moved, and moved Alone:

But if He filled that Throne or knelt
That Altar nigh, or Lamb-like lay,
I saw not. This I saw and felt
That Son of Man was God for aye.

That Son of God was Man and stood,
And from His Vest, more white than snow,
Slowly there dawned a Cross of Blood
That through the glory seemed to grow:

168

Above the heavens His Hands He raised
To bless those Worlds whose race was run;
And lo! in either palm there blazed
The blood-red sign of Victory won;

That Blood the Bethlehem Shepherds eyed
Warming His cheek Who slept apart:
That Blood He drew—the Crucified—
Far-fountained from His Mother's Heart.

‘There shall be New Heavens, and a New Earth.’

University of Virginia Library

MAY CAROLS.

I. PART I. THE DIVINE CHILDHOOD.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V. SANCTA MARIA.

VI. FEST. NATIVITATIS B. V. M.

VII. AB ANGELO SALUTATA.

VIII. NIHIL RESPONDIT.

IX. ST. JOSEPH'S DOUBT.

X. FEST. VISITATIONIS.

XI. AMOR INNOCENTIUM.

XII. FEST. NATIVITATIS.

XIII. PROTEVANGELION.

XIV. DEI GENITRIX.

XV. ADOLESCENTULÆ AMAVERUNT TE NIMIS.

XVI.

XVII. FEST. EPIPHANIÆ.

XVIII. FEST. EPIPHANIÆ.

XIX. MATER DEI.

XX. GAUDIUM ANGELORUM.

XXI. LEGENDA.

XXII. FEST. PRESENTATIONIS.

XXIII. THE FIRST DOLOUR.

(Gladio Transfixa.)

XXIV.

XXV. LEGENDA.

XXVI. THE SECOND DOLOUR.

(Cum Filio Profuga.)

XXVII. SAINT JOSEPH.

XXVIII. ‘JOSEPH, HER HUSBAND.’

XXIX. SAINT JOSEPH'S PATRONAGE.

(‘Constituit eum dominum domus suæ.’ The Household Saints.)

XXX. MATER CHRISTI.

XXXI. MATER CHRISTI.

XXXII. MATER CREATORIS.

XXXIII. MATER SALVATORIS.

XXXIV. HER FOUNDATIONS ARE ON THE HOLY HILLS.

XXXV. MATER ADMIRABILIS.

XXXVI. MATER AMABILIS.

XXXVII. THE THIRD DOLOUR.

(Filium quærens.)

XXXVIII. MATER FILII.

XXXIX.

XL.

XLI.

XLII. NAZARETH.

XLIII. FŒDERIS ARCA.

XLIV. SPIRITUS SPONSA.

XLV. ORANTE.

XLVI. RESPEXIT HUMILITATEM.

XLVII. MULIER FORTIS.

II. PART II. THE SPIRITUAL MOTHERHOOD.

I. AGIOS ATHANATOS.

II. PASTOR ETERNUS.

III. JESUM OSTENDE.

IV. TURRIS EBURNEA.

V. CONSERVABAT IN CORDE.

VI. THE KINDLY TRANSIENCE.

VII.

VIII. MARIÆ CLIENS.

IX. IN MORTE TUTAMEN.

X. SPECULUM JUSTITIÆ.

XI. AUXILIUM CHRISTIANORUM.

XII.

XIII. AB ETERNO ORDINATA.

XIV.

XV.

XVI. IDOLATRIA.

XVII. ‘IN HIM WE HAVE OUR BEING.’

XVIII. TOTA PULCHRA.

XIX. ‘AD NIVES.’

XX. FEST. PURITATIS.

XXI.

XXII. STELLA MATUTINA.

XXIII. THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT.

XXIV. MADE SUBJECT TO VANITY.

XXV. MATER DIVINÆ GRATIÆ.