American poetry -- Catholic authors; English poetry -- Catholic authors
Who doth sweetly rest
On his Mother’s breast,
Lord of the lightnings and the thunders!
Mary’s heart keeps all these wonders.
OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY
BY FRANCIS A. GAFFNEY, O.P.
Lepanto marks the spot of victory,
O’er crescent cruel and strong, by forces weak,
Of hallowed cross; of which, “if sign you seek,”
’Tis not of man but a Divinity.
The white-robed Pius Fifth the Rosary
Uplifted like the rod of Moses, meek;
Whilst Ottomans on Christians wrath would wreak
And, as of old, engulfed them in the sea.
O Lady of the Rosary to-day,
Thy clients all beseech thee, hear their prayer,
And beg the Christ Who raging storms did quell,
Bid warring nations cease their bloody fray;
His power and thine honor, we declare,
O Thou All-Fair, thou joy of Israel.
AT THE LEAP OF THE WATERS
BY EDWARD F. GARESCHÉ, S.J.
How the swift river runs bright to its doom,
Placid and shining and smooth-flowing by,
Blue with the gleam of the heavenly room,
Smiling and calm with the smile of the sky!
Ah, but the plunge! and the shock and the roar,
The spray of vast waters that hurl to the deep,
The churn of its foam, as the measureless pour
Of that wide-brimming torrent leaps sheer from the steep!
Look ye; it reaches small fingers of spray
To clutch at the brink, as unwilling to go
Through the perilous air, and be fretted away
In the tumult of vapor that boileth below.
List ye! the voice of the huge undertone
That murmurs in pain from the cataract’s breast,
Where the bruised, shattered waters perpetual moan
And wander and toss in a weary unrest.
Feel ye the breath of the cool-spraying mist,
Cloudy and gray from the depths of its pain;
Not as when sunbeams the waters have kissed,
Rising in vapor to gather in rain,
But fiercely and madly flung forth on the air,
A shroud for this river that leaps to its death,
A veil o’er the throes of the cataract there,
And rolling and rent with its agonized breath!
Wild torrent! God put thee to thunder His name!
With the roar of thy waters to call to the sky
Of His might, Who hath set thee forever the same,
To topple in foam to the gulfs from on high.
Loud hymn of the lake-lands! from shore unto shore,
Still clamor His praises Who called thee to be,
Till the ears of the nations are tuned to thy roar,
And they hear the vast message He trusted to thee.
NIAGARA
BY EDWARD F. GARESCHÉ, S.J.
God, in His ages past the dawn of days,
Writ one white line of praise,
Which now, in this great stress and hour of need,
I bend my soul to read.
I break the sullen bonds of wearying time,
And with one leap sublime,
Force my astounded soul go back and stand
In the primaeval land!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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