English poetry -- Irish authors; Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint -- Poetry
"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 wheresoever 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 pines; and died.
{13}
_Mater Christi._
IX.
Daily beneath His mother's eyes
Her Lamb matured His lowliness:
Twas hers the lovely Sacrifice
With fillet and with flower to dress.
Beside His little cross He knelt;
With human-heavenly 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 was here!
{14}
_Mater Christi._
X.
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.
{15}
_Mater Creatoris._
XI.
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.
{16}
_Mater Salvatoris._
XII.
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!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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