Give him such fare as may afford
Thy single habitation--best
To meet him half-way in his quest,
The importunate and sad-eyed guest.
Yet somewhat should he give who took
My hospitality, for look,
His is no random vagrancy;
Beneath his rags what hints there be
Of a celestial livery.
Sweet Sorrow, play a grateful part,
Break me the marble of my heart
And of its fragments pave a street
Where, to my bliss, myself may meet
One hastening with piercèd feet.
OUR LADY’S DEATH
BY FATHER EDMUND, C.P.
And didst thou die, dear Mother of our Life?
Sin had no part in thee; then how should death?
Methinks, if aught the great tradition saith
Could wake in loving hearts a moment’s strife
(I said--my own with her new image rife),
’Twere this. And yet ’tis certain, next to faith
Thou didst lie down to render up thy breath:
Though after the seventh sword, no meaner knife
Could pierce that bosom. No, nor did: no sting
Of pain was there; but only joy. The love,
So long thy life ecstatic, and restrained
From setting free thy soul, now gave it wing;
Thy body, soon to reign with it above,
Radiant and fragrant, as in trance, remained.
VIGIL OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN
A sword of silver cuts the fields asunder--
A silver sword to-night, a lake in June--
And plains of snow reflect, the maples under,
The silver arrows of a wintry noon.
The trees are white with moonlight and with ice-pearls;
The trees are white, like ghosts we see in dreams;
The air is still: there are no moaning wind-whirls;
And one sees silence in the quivering beams.
December night, December night, how warming
Is all thy coldness to the Christian soul:
Thy very peace at each true heart is storming
In potent waves of love that surging roll.
December night, December night, how glowing
Thy frozen rains upon our warm hearts lie:
Our God upon this vigil is bestowing
A thousand graces from the silver sky.
O moon, O symbol of our Lady’s whiteness;
O snow, O symbol of our Lady’s heart;
O night, chaste night, bejewelled with argent brightness,
How sweet, how bright, how loving, kind thou art.
O miracle: to-morrow and to-morrow,
In tender reverence shall no praise abate;
For from all seasons shall we new jewels borrow
To deck the Mother born Immaculate.
THE OLD VIOLIN
BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN
Though tuneless, stringless, it lies there in dust,
Like some great thought on a forgotten page;
The soul of music cannot fade or rust,--
The voice within it stronger grows with age;
Its strings and bow are only triffling things--
A master-touch!--its sweet soul wakes and sings.
MAURICE DE GUERIN
BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN
The old wine filled him, and he saw, with eyes
Anoint of Nature, fauns and dryads fair
Unseen by others; to him maidenhair
And waxen lilacs, and those birds that rise
A-sudden from tall reeds at slight surprise,
Brought charmed thoughts; and in earth everywhere
He, like sad Jaques, found a music rare
As that of Syrinx to old Grecians wise.
A pagan heart, a Christian soul had he,
He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sighed,
Till earth and heaven met within his breast;
As if Theocritus in Sicily
Had come upon the Figure crucified
And lost his gods in deep, Christ-given rest.
HE MADE US FREE
BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN
As flame streams upward, so my longing thought
Flies up with Thee,
Thou God and Saviour who hast truly wrought
Life out of death, and to us, loving, brought
A fresh, new world; and in Thy sweet chains caught,
And made us free!
As hyacinths make way from out the dark,
My soul awakes,
At thought of Thee, like sap beneath the bark;
As little violets in field and park
Rise to the trilling thrush and meadow-lark,
New hope it takes.
As thou goest upward through the nameless space
We call the sky,
Like jonquil perfume softly falls Thy grace;
It seems to touch and brighten every place;
Fresh flowers crown our wan and weary race,
O Thou on high.
Hadst Thou not risen, there would be no more joy
Upon earth’s sod;
Life would still be with us a wound or toy,
A cloud without the sun,--O Babe, O Boy,
A Man of Mother pure, with no alloy,
O risen God!
Thou, God and King, didst “mingle in the game,”
(Cease, all fears; cease!)
For love of us,--not to give Virgil’s fame
Or Croesus’ wealth, not to make well the lame,
Or save the sinner from deserved shame,
But for sweet Peace!
For peace, for joy,--not that the slave might lie
In luxury,
Not that all woe from us should always fly,
Or golden crops with Syrian roses vie
In every field; but in Thy peace to die
And rise,--be free!
THE GRANDEURS OF MARY
BY FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, D.D.
What is this grandeur I see up in heaven,
A splendour that looks like a splendour divine?
What creature so near the Creator is throned?
O Mary, those marvellous glories are thine.
But who would have thought that a creature could live
With the fires of the Godhead so awfully nigh?
Oh, who could have dreamed, mighty Mother of God,
That ever God’s power could have raised thee so high?
What name can we give to a queenship so grand?
What thought can we think of a glory like this?
Saints and angels lie far in the distance, remote
From the golden excess of thine unmated bliss.
Thy person, thy soul, thy most beautiful form,
Thine office, thy name, thy most singular grace--
God hath made for them, Mother, a world by itself,
A shrine all alone, a most worshipful place.
Mid the blaze of those fires, eternal, unmade,
Thy Maker unspeakably makes thee his own;
The arms of the Three Uncreated, outstretched,
Round the Word’s mortal Mother in rapture are thrown.
Thy sinless conception, thy jubilant birth,
Thy crib and thy cross, thine assumption and crown,
They have raised thee on high to the right hand of Him
Whom the spells of thy love to thy bosom drew down.
I am blind with thy glory; in all God’s wide world
I find nothing like thee for glory and power:
I can hardly believe that thou grewest on earth,
In the green fields of Juda, a scarce-noticed flower.
And is it not really eternal, divine?
Is it human, created, a glorified heart,
So like God, and not God? Ah, Maker of men,
We bless thee for being the God that thou art.
O Mary, what ravishing pageants I see,
What wonders and works centre round thee in heaven,
What creations of grace fall like light from thy hands,
What creator-like powers to thy prudence are given.
What vast jurisdiction, what numberless realms,
What profusion of dread and unlimited power,
What holy supremacies, awful domains,
The Word’s mighty Mother enjoys for her dower.
What grand ministrations of pity and strength,
What endless processions of beautiful light,
What incredible marvels of motherly love,
What queenly resplendence of empire and right.
What sounds as of seas flowing all round thy throne,
What flashings of fire from thy burning abode,
What thunders of glory, what tempests of power,
What calms, like the calms in the Bosom of God.
Inexhaustible wonder; the treasures of God
Seem to multiply under thy marvellous hand;
And the power of thy Son seems to gain and to grow,
When He deigns to obey thy maternal command.
Ten thousand magnificent greatnesses blend
Their vast oceans of light, at the foot of thy throne;
Ten thousand unspeakable majesties grace
The royalty vested in Mary alone.
But look, what a wonder there is up in God:
One love, like a special perfection, we see;
And the chief of thy grandeurs, great Mother, is there--
In the love the Eternal Himself has for thee.
THE RIGHT MUST WIN
BY FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, D.D.
Oh, it is hard to work for God,
To rise and take His part
Upon this battlefield of earth,
And not sometimes lose heart.
He hides Himself so wondrously,
As though there were no God;
He is least seen when all the powers
Of ill are most abroad.
Or He deserts us at the hour
The fight is all but lost;
And seems to leave us to ourselves
Just when we need Him most.
Ill masters good; good seems to change
To ill with greatest ease;
And, worst of all, the good with good
Is at cross-purposes.
Ah! God is other than we think;
His ways are far above,
Far beyond reason’s height, and reached
Only by child-like love.
Workman of God! Oh, lose not heart,
But learn what God is like;
And in the darkest battle-field
Thou shalt know where to strike.
Thrice blessed is he to whom is given
The instinct that can tell
That God is on the field when He
Is most invisible.
Blessed too, is he who can divine
Where real right doth lie,
And dares to take the side that seems
Wrong to man’s blindfold eye.
For right is right, since God is God;
And right the day must win;
To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin.
MATER DOLOROSA
BY JOHN FITZPATRICK, O.M.I.
She stands, within the shadow, at the foot
Of the high tree she planted: thirty-three
Full years have sped, and such has grown to be
The stem that burgeoned forth from Jesse’s root.
Spring swiftly passed and panted in pursuit
The eager summer; now she stands to see
The only fruit-time of her only tree:
And all the world is waiting for the Fruit.
Now is faith’s sad fruition: this one hour
Of gathered expectation wears the crown
Of the long grief with which the years were rife;
As in her lap--a sudden autumn shower--
The earthquake with his trembling hand shakes down
The red, ripe Fruitage of the Tree of Life.
YULETIDE
BY ALICE FURLONG
In a stable bare,
Lo, the great Ones are.
Strew the Ivy and the Myrtle
Round about the Virgin’s kirtle!
Ass and oxen mild
Breathe soft upon the Child!
Blow the scent of bygone summer
On your breath to the New-comer!
Be ye well content
To be straitly pent
Backwards in the rocky chamber
From the angel’s wings of amber!
Rapt the seraphs sit,
With godly faces lit
In a radiance shining solely
From the Christ-child, meek and holy.
High they chant and clear
Of the lovely cheer
Ring down the new evangels
Of the mystic, midnight angels.
Faring with good will
From the misty hill,
Every shepherd sacrificeth
To the prophet that ariseth.
Joseph, Mary’s spouse,
Prince of David’s House,
Bendeth low in adorations
To the Ruler of the Nations.
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!
The tresses of the ancient flood are kissed
With virginal, white mist.
The same soft, thunderous sound
Thrills the wild woods around,
But oh the vast and mighty peace that broods
On these green solitudes,
Where the great land, with one tremendous tone,
Litanies to God, alone!
Tongue of the continent! Thou whose hymning shakes
The bosom of the lakes!
O sacrificial torrent, keen and bright,
Hurled from thy glorious height!
Thou sacerdotal presence, clothed in power,
At once the victim and the white-robed priest,
Whose praise throughout these ages hath not ceased,
Whose altar steams with incense every hour!
Lo, in all days, from thy white waters, rise
The savors of perpetual sacrifice!
I see pale prophecy of Christ’s dear blood!--
The transubstantiation of thy flood!
Oh the wild wonder of the vast emotion
Of the perturbed wave,
That cries and wanders like the fearful ocean,
Seeking, with none to save!
In their wide agony the rapids roam,
A world of waves, an universe of pain!
The vexed, tumultous clamor of their foam
Crying to God with agonized refrain,
Where the sad rocks their quivering summits hide
In the loud anguish of the refluent tide.
Yet, with a willingness that leaps to sorrow
Swift run the ragged surges to the height,
And from their pain is born a pure delight--
The fear to-day, the snowy peace to-morrow!--
Cleaving like darts their swift and silvery way
With sudden gleams, and barbs of glittering spray,
They hurry to the brink, and swift are lost
In that stupendous leap, that infinite holocaust!
Oh Christ-like glory of the praying water
That leaps forever to its mystic death!
And from the anguish of that sobbing slaughter
Lifts the clear glory of the torrent’s breath,
Where like a paean of rapturous victory calls
The solemn jubilation of the falls!
O alabastrine priest--thy splendor spraying
More lasting than the immemorial hills!
O monument of waves, O undecaying
While God’s right hand thy flowing chalice fills!
Under the transient world’s astonished eyes
Thou offerest abiding sacrifice!
In the pale morning, when the rising sun
Flatters thy pouring flood with slanting beams,
Most reverent thy duteous waters run,
And hymn to God with all their thousand streams.
And in the blazing majesty of noon,
Still lifts thy wave its sacrificial tune,
And spills, like jewels of some eastern story,
Its bright, impetuous avalanche of glory!
And in the stilly spaces of the night,
While heaven wonders with its wakeful stars,
Thou prayest still, beneath the solemn light,
In booming tones that reach to heaven’s bars,
Keeping thy vigils, while the angelic moon
Walks on thy perilous verge with glorious shoon,
Chanting from foam and spray without encease
Thy yearning immemorial prayer for peace!
COMMUNION
BY CAROLINE GILTINAN
Mother Mary, thee I see
Bringing Him, thy Babe, to me,
Thou dost say, with trusting smile:
“Hold Him, dear, a little while.”
Mother Mary, pity me,
For He struggles to be free!
My heart, my arms--He finds defiled:
I am unworthy of thy Child.
Mary, Mother, charity!
Bring thy Baby back to me!
THE NIGHTINGALE
BY GERALD GRIFFIN
As the mute nightingale in closest groves
Lies hid at noon, but when day’s piercing eye
Is locked in night, with full heart beating high
Poureth her plain-song o’er the light she loves;
So, Virgin Ever-pure and Ever-blest,
Moon of religion, from whose radiant face
Reflected streams the light of heavenly grace
On broken hearts, by contrite thoughts oppressed:
So, Mary, they who justly feel the weight
Of Heaven’s offended Majesty, implore
Thy reconciling aid with suppliant knee:
Of sinful man, O sinless Advocate,
To thee they turn, nor Him they less adore;
’Tis still His light they love, less dreadful seen in thee.
TRYSTE NOEL
BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY
The Ox he openeth wide the doore,
And from the Snowe he calls her inne,
And he hath seen her smile therefore,
Our Ladye without Sinne.
Now soone from Sleep
A Starre shall leap,
And sonne arrive both King and Hinde:
_Amen, Amen_:
But O the place co’d I but finde!
The Ox hath hushed his voyce and bent
Trewe eyes of Pitty ore the Mow,
And on his lovelie Neck, forspent,
The Blessed layes her Browe.
Around her feet,
Full Warme and Sweete,
His bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell:
_Amen, Amen_:
But sore am I with Vaine Travel!
The Ox is Host in Judah stall
And Host of more than onlie one,
For close she gathereth withal
Our Lorde her littel Sonne.
Glad Hinde and King
Their Gyfte may bring,
But wo’d to-night my Teares were there,
_Amen, Amen_:
Between her Bosom and His hayre!
THE WILD RIDE
BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY
_I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing._
Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle,
Weatherworn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion,
With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.
The trail is through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses;
There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice
us:
What odds? We are Knights of the Grail, we are vowed to the riding.
Thought’s self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb,
And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam:
Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing.
A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle,
A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty:
We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers.
_I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing._
We spur to a land of no name, outracing the stormwind;
We leap to the infinite dark like the sparks from the anvil.
Thou leadest, O God! All’s well with Thy troopers that follow.
ODE FOR A MASTER MARINER ASHORE
BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY
There in his room, whene’er the moon looks in,
And silvers now a shell, and now a fin,
And o’er his chart glides like an argosy,
Quiet and old sits he.
Danger! he hath grown homesick for thy smile.
Where hidest thou the while, heart’s boast,
Strange face of beauty sought and lost,
Star-face that lured him out from boyhood’s isle?
Blown clear from dull indoors, his dreams behold
Night-water smoke and sparkle as of old,
The taffrail lurch, the sheets triumphant toss
Their phosphor-flowers across.
Towards ocean’s either rim the long-exiled
Wears on, till stunted cedars throw
A lace-like shadow over snow,
Or tropic fountains wash their agates wild.
Awhile, play up and down the briny spar
Odors of Surinam and Zanzibar,
Till blithely thence he ploughs, in visions new,
The Labradorian blue;
All homeless hurricanes about him break;
The purples of spent day he sees
From Samos to the Hebrides,
And drowned men dancing darkly in his wake.
Where the small deadly foam-caps, well descried,
Top, tier on tier, the hundred-mountained tide,
Away, and far away, his pride is borne,
Riding the noisy morn,
Plunges, and preens her wings, and laughs to know
The helm and tightening halyards still
Follow the urging of his will,
And scoff at sullen earth a league below.
Mischance hath barred him from his heirdom high,
And shackled him with many an inland tie,
And of his only wisdom made a jibe
Amid an alien tribe:
No wave abroad but moans his fallen state,
The trade-wind ranges now, the trade-wind roars!
Why is it on a yellowing page he pores?
Ah, why this hawser fast to a garden gate?
Thou friend so long withdrawn, so deaf, so dim,
Familiar Danger, O forget not him!
Repeat of thine evangel yet the whole
Unto his subject soul,
Who suffers no such palsy of her drouth,
Nor hath so tamely worn her chain,
But she may know that voice again,
And shake the reefs with answer of her mouth.
O give him back, before his passion fail,
The singing cordage and the hollow sail,
And level with those aged eyes let be
The bright unsteady sea;
And move like any film from off his brain
The pasture wall, the boughs that run
Their evening arches to the sun,
The hamlet spire across the sown champaign;
And on the shut space and the trivial hour,
Turn the great floods! and to thy spousal bower,
With rapt arrest and solemn loitering,
Him whom thou lovedst bring:
That he, thy faithful one, with praising lip,
Not having, at the last, less grace
Of thee than had his roving race,
Sum up his strength to perish with a ship.
IN LEINSTER
BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY
I try to knead and spin, but my life is low the while.
Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile;
Yet if I walk alone, and think of naught at all,
Why from me that’s young should the wild tears fall?
The shower-stricken earth, the earth-colored streams,
They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams;
And yonder ivy fondling the broke castle-wall,
It pulls upon my heart till the wild tears fall.
The cabin-door looks down, a furze-lighted hill,
And far as Leighlin Cross the fields are green and still;
But once I hear the blackbird in Leighlin hedges call,
The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall!
AUNT MARY
A Christmas Chant
BY ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER
Now, of all the trees by the king’s highway,
Which do you love the best?
O! the one that is green upon Christmas Day,
The bush with the bleeding breast.
Now the holly with her drops of blood for me:
For that is our dear Aunt Mary’s tree.
Its leaves are sweet with our Saviour’s Name,
’Tis a plant that loves the poor:
Summer and winter it shines the same
Beside the cottage door.
O! the holly with her drops of blood for me:
For that is our kind Aunt Mary’s tree.
’Tis a bush that the birds will never leave:
They sing in it all day long;
But sweetest of all upon Christmas Eve
Is to hear the robin’s song.
’Tis the merriest sound upon earth or sea:
For it comes from our own Aunt Mary’s tree.
So, of all that grows by the king’s highway,
I love that tree the best;
’Tis a bower for the birds upon Christmas Day,
The bush of the bleeding breast.
O! the holly with her drops of blood for me:
For that is our sweet Aunt Mary’s tree.
KING ARTHUR’S WAES-HAEL
BY ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER
Waes-hael for knight and dame;
O merry be their dole;
Drink-hael! In Jesu’s name
We fill the tawny bowl;
But cover down the curving crest,
Mould of the Orient Lady’s breast.
Waes-hael! yet lift no lid:
Drain ye the reeds for wine.
Drink-hael! the milk was hid
That soothed that Babe divine;
Hush’d, as this hollow channel flows,
He drew the balsam from the rose.
Waes-hael! thus glowed the breast
Where a God yearned to cling;
Drink-hael! so Jesu pressed
Life from its mystic spring;
Then hush and bend in reverend sign
And breathe the thrilling reeds for wine.
Waes-hael! in shadowy scene
Lo! Christmas children we:
Drink-hael! behold we lean
At a far Mother’s knee;
To dream that thus her bosom smiled,
And learn the lip of Bethlehem’s Child.
OLD NUNS
BY JAMES M. HAYES
Our Lady smiles on youthful nuns,
She loves them well.
Our Lady’s smile like sunshine floods
Each convent cell,
But fondest falls Our Lady’s smile
Where old nuns dwell;
Old nuns whose hearts are young with love
For Mary’s Son,
Old nuns whose prayers for faltering souls
Have victory won,
Old nuns whose lives are beautiful
With service done.
Their love a loveless world has saved
From God’s dread rod,
The paths where Sorrow walks with Sin
Their feet have trod,
Their knees have worn the flags that pave
The house of God.
Our Lady smiles on youthful nuns,
She loves them well;
Our Lady’s smile like sunshine floods
Each convent cell;
But fondest falls Our Lady’s smile
Where old nuns dwell.
THE MOTHER OF THE ROSE
BY JAMES M. HAYES
I kneel on Holy Thursday with the faithful worshipping
Where Christ is throned in splendor as the sacramental King.
I ever will remember it, that wondrous full-blown rose
Among the burning tapers on the altar of repose.
O blessed among roses all, to bloom in beauty there,
To give your heart unto your God and in His glory share.
* * * * *