Thy second string is the sweet Almond bloom Mounted high upon Selines' crest: As it alone (and only it) had room, To knit thy crown, and glorify the rest. The third is from the garden culled, the Rose, The eye of flowers, worthy for her scent, To top the fairest lily now, that grows With wonder on the thorny regiment. The fourth is the humble Ivy intersert But lowly laid, as on the earth asleep, Preserved in her antique bed of vert, No faiths more firm or flat, then, where't doth creep. But that, which sums all, is the Eglantine, Which of the field is cleped the sweetest briar, Inflamed with ardour to that mystic shine, In Moses' bush unwasted in the fire. Thus love, and hope, and burning charity, (Divinest graces) are so intermixt With odorous sweets and soft humility, As if they adored the head, whereon they are fixed. PART TWO CHAPTER II THE ANNUNCIATION I And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women. S. Luke, I. 28 Oh God, whose will it was that thy Word should take flesh, at the message of the Angel, in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary, grant to us thy suppliants that, we who believe her to be truly the Mother of God, may be assisted by her intercession with thee. Through &c. ROMAN. When we attempt to reconstruct imaginatively any scene of Holy Scripture it is almost inevitable that we see it through the eyes of some great artist of the past. The Crucifixion comes to us as Dürer or Guido Reni saw it; the Presentation or the Visitation presents itself to us in terms of the imagination of Raphael; we see the Nativity as a composition of Corregio. So the Annunciation rises before us when we close our eyes and attempt to make "the composition of place" in a familiar grouping of the actors: a startled maiden who has arisen hurriedly from work or prayer, looking with wonder at the apparition of an angel who has all the eagerness of one who has come hastily upon an urgent mission. The surroundings differ, but artists of the Renaissance like to think of a sumptuous background as a worthy setting for so great an event.