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Read Ebook: May Carols by De Vere Aubrey
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Ebook has 88 lines and 6626 words, and 2 pages
ours break; and lo! Through chasms of endless azure flash The peaks of everlasting snow.
He stands; he listens; on his ear Swells softly forth some virgin hymn: The white procession windeth near, With glimmering lights in sunshine dim.
Mother of Purity and Peace! They sing the Saviour's name and thine Clothe them for ever with the fleece Unspotted of thy Lamb Divine!
Far down the bird may sing of love; The honey-bearing blossom blow: But hail, ye hills that rise above The limit of perpetual snow!
O Alpine City, with thy walls Of rock eterne and spires of ice, Where torrent still to torrent calls, And precipice to precipice;--
How like that holier City thou, The heavenly Salem's earthly porch, Which rears among the stars her brow, And plants firm feet on earth--the Church!
"Decaying, ne'er to be decayed," Her woods, like thine, renew their youth: Her streams, in rocky arms embayed, Are clear as virtue, strong as truth.
At times the lake may burst its dam; Black pine and rock the valley strew; But o'er the ruin soon the lamb Its flowery pasture crops anew.
She, too, in regions near the sky Up-piles her cloistered snows, and thence Diffuses gales of purity O'er fields of consecrated sense.
On those still heights a love-light glows The plains from them alone receive;-- Not all the Lily! There thy Rose, O Mary, triumphs, morn and eve!
Cloud-piercing Mountains! Chance and Change More high than you their thrones advance. Self-vanquished Nature's rockiest range Gives way before them like the trance
Of one that wakes. From morn to eve Through fissured clefts her mists make way; At Night's cold touch they freeze, and cleave Her crags; and, with a Titan's sway,
Flake off and peel the rotting rocks, And heap the glacier tide below With isles of sand and floating blocks, As leaves on streams when tempests blow.
Lo, thus the great decree all-just, O Earth, thy mountains hear; and learn From fire and frost its import--"dust Thou art; and shalt to dust return."
He only is Who ever was; The All-measuring Mind; the Will Supreme. Rocks, mountains, worlds, like bubbles pass: God is; the things not God but seem.
From end to end, O God, Thy Will With swift yet ordered might doth reach: Thy purposes their scope fulfil In sequence, resting each on each.
In Thee is nothing sudden; nought From harmony and law that swerves: The orbits of Thine act and thought In soft succession wind their curves.
O then with what a gradual care Must thou have shaped that sacred shrine, That Ark of grace, ordained to bear The burthen of the Babe divine!
How many a gift within her breast Lay stored, for Him a couch to strew! How many a virtue lined His nest! How many a grace beside Him grew!
Of love on love what sweet excess! How deep a faith! a hope how high!-- Mary! on earth of thee we guess; But we shall see thee when we die!
She mused upon the Saints of old; Their toils, their pains, she longed to share Of Him she mused, the Child foretold; To Him her hands she stretched in prayer.
No moment passed without its crown; And each new grace was used so well It drew some tenfold talent down, Some miracle on miracle.
O golden House! O boundless store Of wealth by heavenly commerce won! When God Himself could give no more, He gave thee all; He gave His Son!
Blessed the Mother of her Lord! And yet for this more blessed still, Because she heard and kept His Word-- High servant of His sovereign Will!
Not all thy purity, although The whitest moon that ever lit The peaks of Lebanonian snow Shone dusk and dim compared with it;--
Not that great love of thine, whose beams Transcended in their virtuous heat Those suns which melt the ice-bound streams, And make earth's pulses newly beat:--
It was not these that from the sky Drew down to thee the Eternal Word: He looked on thy humility; He knew thee, "Handmaid of thy Lord."
Let no one claim with thee a part; Let no one, Mary, name thy name, While, aping God, upon his heart Pride sits, a demon robed in flame.
Proud Vices, die! Where Sin has place Be Sin's familiar self-disgust. Proud Virtues, doubly die; that Grace At last may burgeon from your dust.
Supreme among the things create Omnipotence revealed below, More swift than thought, more strong than fate, Such, such, Humility, art thou!
All strength beside is weakness. Might Belongs to God: and they alone, Self-emptied souls and seeming-slight, Are filled with God and share his throne.
O Mary! strong wert thou and meek; Thy meekness gave thee strength divine: Thyself in nothing didst thou seek; Therefore thy Maker made Him thine.
Through Pride our parents disobeyed; Rebellious Sense avenged the crime: The soul, the body's captive made, Became the branded thrall of time.
With barrenness the earth was cursed; Inviolate she brought forth no more Her fruits, nor freely as at first:-- Thou cam'st, her Eden to restore!
Low breathes the wind upon the string; The harp, responsive, sounds in turn: Thus o'er thy Soul the Spirit's wing Creative passed; and Christ was born.
Met in a point the circles twain Of temporal and eternal things Embrace, close linked. Redemption's chain Drops thence to earth its myriad rings.
In either circle, from of old, That point of meeting stood decreed;-- Twin mysteries cast in one deep mould, "The Woman," and "the Woman's Seed."
Mary, long ages ere thy birth Resplendent with Salvation's Sign, In thee a stainless hand the earth Put forth, to meet the Hand Divine!
First trophy of all-conquering Grace, First victory of that Blood all pure, Of man's once fair but fallen race Thou stood'st, the monument secure.
The Word made Flesh! the Way! the Door! The link that dust with Godhead blends! Through Him the worlds their God adore:-- Through thee that God to man descends.
A soul-like sound, subdued yet strong, A whispered music, mystery-rife, A sound like Eden airs among The branches of the Tree of Life--
At first no more than this; at last The voice of every land and clime, It swept o'er Earth, a clarion blast: Earth heard, and shook with joy sublime.
Mary! thy triumph was her own. In thee she saw her prime restored: She saw ascend a spotless Throne For Him, her Saviour, and her Lord.
The Church had spoken. She that dwells Sun-clad with beatific light, From Truth's unvanquished citadels, From Sion's Apostolic height,
Brow-bound with myrtle and with gold, Spring, sacred now from blasts and blights, Lifts in a firm, untrembling hold Her chalice of fulfilled delights.
Confirmed around her queenly lip The smile late wavering, on she moves; And seems through deepening tides to step Of steadier joys and larger loves.
The stony Ash itself relents, Into the blue embrace of May Sinking, like old impenitents Heart-touched at last; and, far away,
The long wave yearns along the coast With sob suppressed, like that which thrills Some chapel on the Irish hills.
Rejoice, O Mary! and be glad, Thou Church triumphant here below! He cometh, in meekest emblems clad; Himself he cometh to bestow!
That body which thou gav'st, O Earth, He giveth back--that Flesh, that Blood; Born of the Altar's mystic birth; At once thy Worship and thy Food.
He who of old on Calvary bled On all thine altars lies to-day, A bloodless Sacrifice, but dread; The Lamb in heaven adored for aye.
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