"The wisdom of the church, which consecrates the fleeting seasons of time to the interests of eternity, has dedicated the month of May (the birth-day festival, as it were, of creation) to her who was ever destined in the divine counsels to become the Mother of her Creator. It belongs to her, of course, as she is the representative of the incarnation, and its practical exponent to a world but too apt to forget what it professes to hold. The following poems, written in her honor, are an attempt to set forth, though but in mere outline, each of them some of the great ideas or essential principles embodied in that all-embracing mystery. On a topic so comprehensive, converse statements, at one time illustrating highest excellence compatible with mere creaturely existence, at another, the infinite distance between the chief of earthly creatures and the Creator, may seem, at first sight, and to some eyes, contradictory, although in reality mutually correlative. On an attentive perusal, however, that harmony which exists among the many portions of a single mastering truth can hardly fail to appear, and with it the scope and aim of this poem." This certainly is aiming high. Not only does the poet include in his plan the moral delineation of her whom the church holds the highest type of created humanity; he scales the heavens themselves. But our author is impious Enceladus crushed beneath his own presumption, but a Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord, and rising to the infinite sky in beatific visions. Perhaps we best realize the boldness of the enterprise when we think for how many centuries the praise of the Mother and Son has exhausted thought and imagination of the greatest souls. He is a daring gleaner who follows the fathers of the church over their chosen fields. Yet the May {79} Carols are a sheaf from the same golden foison where Augustine and Aquinas and Chrysostom led the reapers. How fruitful must be the soil! We have never seen anything to compare with the picture of the Holy Child here presented, unless it be the picture of the Holy Mother. We cannot, in our allotted space, render all the admirable gradations and delicate shadings, but must cull with difficult choice one or two only. One of the first is the MATER CHRISTI Daily beneath his mother's eyes Her lamb maturity 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 with in her will she felt, And yet his will her will obeyed_. . . . 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 world 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.