Classic Poem

Ave, Gratia Plena.

Poised on the well's mossed brink the unfilled ewer
And one dropped lily at her whiter feet
Unnoted. Does she listen? What sound so sweet,
Her soul from out the bosom's coverture
Into those raptured eyes, could so allure?
Or, with some vision unfolded there where meet
Wan sands and sky-line, is her sense replete?
Nay, but not these; but lo, God's time mature.
Lo, the lit air, the sudden glory poured
And fragrance shed; and from the splendid space
Forth-issuing, as a passion freighted chord
Midst some vast minster's echoing arches waking,
A voice, in wave on wave of sweetness, breaking
Upon her spell-bound soul, " Hail; Full of grace."

Fiat Mihi.

What tremor of delight thrills earth and sky,
And wakes the nested birds, and turns the air
From violet to gold? And hark, what rare
Sphere-music mingles with the numerous sigh
Of wind-swayed palms? And mark, how crimsoned lie
The lone and glimmering sands. Ah, grown aware
Of God, the quickened earth is loth to fare
Into the joyless night. Thou shalt not die,
O crown of all days risen. For, ne'er since broke
The primal dawn, when stars of morning heard
God's voice and sang together, ne'er since woke
Its myriad life, has Nature so been stirred
To the great soul's deeps, as when this Maiden spoke,
And in her womb Incarnate lay the Word.

Ecce, Ancilla Domini.

Handmaiden — but Queen crowned and throned above
God's kingdoms and all hearts — hence, nevermore
Shall one in dreams the hidden realms explore
Of absolute loveliness, and know not of
This perfect face now radiant with new love —
Thy rare face unrecorded — and before
Thy beauty shall not all his heart outpour
Transfigured, e'en as now, beneath the Dove,
Beside thy ewer, beside the brimming well,
The bending palm o'erhead, and at thy feet,
In the well's imaged heavens, one tremulous star;
While, at thy heart, that song oracular
Gathers to fulness, and inviolable
Sweet Maidenhood and Motherhood first meet.