The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

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.

University of Virginia Library

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.

XXVI. MATER DIVINÆ GRATIÆ.

XXVII. DETACHMENT.

XXVIII. THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES.

XXIX. FILIA MARIÆ.

XXX. EXPECTATIO.

XXXI.

XXXII. ‘JESUS AND HIS MOTHER WERE THERE.’

XXXIII. LUMEN NUPTIARUM.

XXXIV.

XXXV.

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

XXXVII. GRATIÆ PLENA.

XXXVIII. VAS INSIGNE DEVOTIONIS.

XXXIX. THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT.

XL. THE ‘SINGLE EYE.’

XLI. MYSTICA.

XLII. BEATI QUI AUDIUNT VERBUM DEI.

XLIII. AUTHENTIC THEISM.

XLIV. ‘TESTE DAVID CUM SIBYLLA.’

(Plato.)

XLV. ‘TESTE DAVID CUM SIBYLLA.’

(Plato.)

XLVI. ‘TESTE DAVID CUM SIBYLLA.’

(Idea Platonica.)

XLVII. DEUS ABSCONDITUS.

XLVIII. THE VEIL.

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

L. JANUA CŒLI.

LI.

LII. CAUSA NOSTRÆ LÆTITIÆ.

LIII. STELLA MARIS.

LIV. AARONIS VIRGA.

LV. UNICA.

LVI. REGINA PROPHETARUM.

LVII.

LVIII. TURRIS DAVIDICA.

LIX. ‘TU SOLA INTEREMISTI OMNES HÆRESES.’

LX. UT ACIES ORDINATA.

LXI.

LXII. SEDES SAPIENTIÆ.

LXIII. TRUTH.

LXIV. IMPLICIT FAITH.

‘MULTUM NON MULTA.’

LXV. MATER VIVENTIUM.

LXVI. GEUS NON SANCTA.

LXVII. MATER VENERABILIS.

LXVIII.

LXIX. THE FOURTH DOLOUR.

(The Meeting on Calvary.)

LXX. REFUGIUM PECCATORUM.

LXXI. THE FIFTH DOLOUR.

(Beside the Cross.)

LXXII. STABAT MATER.