Classic Poem

The Spouse of one who toiled for daily wage
In Nazareth, once climbed the mountain slope
To glad the home of her who, in her age,
First knew a mother's hope;

And greeting her, who in all reverence spoke
A welcome to the unexpected guest,
She, praising God, exclaimed: " All tribes and folk
For aye shall hail me blest."

Oh, with what scorn the presage had been heard
By that proud age: oh, futile schemes of man:
Oh, human thought, how widely hast thou erred,
How brief thy vision's span.

We, witnesses how to that word of thine,
The obedient future gave fulfilment sooth —
We, born in love, reared in the school divine
Of the celestial truth —

Mary, we know that he alone made good
The lofty promise from thy lips that came,
Who prompted thy full heart. In reverent mood
Mary, we speak thy name.

" Mother of God," to us implies that word.
Hail, blessed One: how match such sound benign?
What dignity on mortal e'er conferred,
Comes near this rank of thine?

Hail, blessed One: did rudest age e'er shun
To speak a name whose sound doth charm and please?
Where hath it not been taught by sire to son?
What mountains and what seas

Have heard it not? Nor is its fame confined
To elder lands, whose shrines its glories tell;
The new-found world the Genoese divined,
Hath worshippers as well.

In desert plains, past oceans bleak and wild,
What flowret named in savage tongue doth grow,
That hath not bloomed to deck thine altars mild,
Thy thresholds to bestrow?

O Virgin, Lady dear, all-holy One —
What titles sweet hath every tongue for thee:
Proud nations boast, where'er doth shine the sun,
Thy clients still to be.

Thee, when the day doth dawn and doth decline,
And when the sun doth part its course midway,
Church-bells salute, and give the sacred sign
That all to thee may pray.

When the dark watches of the night appal,
Thy helpful name the timorous child doth sigh;
To thee, when downward swoops the sudden squall
Do trusting sailors cry.

The sorrowing woman to thy royal heart
Confides the tears despised of man that roll;
To thee, blest Queen, the woes doth she impart
Of her immortal soul.

To thee, who ne'er a hearing hast denied
To prayers and plaints from every human state,
Unlike the world, whose sympathies divide
The lowly from the great —

To thee, O Blest, who once a grief didst know
That ne'er shall be forgot while time doth last,
E'en yet in daily memory is that woe,
Though centuries have passed.

E'en yet in daily pity hearts are sad
In many lands, while men thy sorrows tell,
And earth of every joy of thine is glad,
As though it late befel.

So great a glory doth the earth award
Unto God's Mother, first in human praise;
To such exalted rank it pleased the Lord
This Hebrew Girl to raise.

O seed of Israel, to dust abased;
O people to long wrath of heaven condemned —
Say, is not she, by us in honour placed,
Sprung from thy stock contemned?

Was David not her sire? and she, the dream
Of all thine ancient seers, O Israel?
Of whom a Virgin's triumph was the theme,
O'er the abyss of hell?

Turn, turn at last: to her your hearts incline,
And be ye saved by her who saveth all;
Nor be there tribe, nor people who decline
With us on her to call.

Hail, to thee, next the Godhead's awful height,
O Rose, O Star, our Hope when threatened most,
Fair as the sun, yet terrible in might
As an embattled host.