Beautiful poem about the Virgin Mary

[whosebob]

A LITTLE LITANY

When God turned back eternity and was young,
Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth
(As under the low arch the land is bright)
Peered through you, gate of heaven – and saw the earth.

Or shutting out his shining skies awhile
Built you about him for a house of gold
To see in pictured walls his storied world
Return upon him as a tale is told.

Or found his mirror there; the only glass
That would not break with that unbearable light
Till in a corner of the high dark house
God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night.

Star of his morning; that unfallen star
In that strange starry overturn of space
When earth and sky changed places for an hour
And heaven looked upwards in a human face.

Or young on your strong knees and lifted up
Wisdom cried out, whose voice is in the street,
And more than twilight of twiformed cherubim
Made of his throne indeed a mercy-seat.

Or risen from play at your pale raiment’s hem
God, grown adventurous from all time’s repose,
Of your tall body climbed the ivory tower
And kissed upon your mouth the mystic rose.

– G.K. Chesterton

Download this poem in PDF format (fancy font, bordered text).

“A Little Litany” is taken from his book The Queen of Seven Swords.

In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

I would like to add a poem too…

A poem in honour of Mary’s feast… 15 August
Fr Ambrose

**The kingdom is the Lord’s (Ps 22:28)

**The two old women by the mother’s bed
Keened into silence and a swaying sleep.
It was not long until the dawn would break.
John, in the other room, was still awake,
Remembering the words her son had said.
At last they left him and his sleep was deep.

The mother had not stirred since afternoon;
She lay in the brief peace of those who rest
Between a sickbed and another bed;
A slight breeze brushed the unresponsive head;
The gray hair, faintly in the fading moon,
Stirred white; the rough hands rested on her breast.

The caller did not knock. He stooped and entered;
He did not close the door; he made no sound.
The weary women in their heavy rest
Slept on. He raised his giant hand and blessed
Them with a moment’s cross, and then he centred
His slow smile where the sleep was more profound.

Stooping again, as lightly as a child
Takes in his arms a kitten from the floor
He knelt and pressed his heavy arms around
The silent mother, and he made no sound;
He rose as tall as the room would let; he smiled
Downward to her and tiptoed to the door.

The sun was rising as he stepped outside.
His warm arms warded off the morning chill.
The moon was the balloon a playful child
Drops from the top window. The planets filed
In circles all about. From high the guide
Of golden light (not sunlight) reached to fill

The lower blue with gold. Soon all was gold.
The sleeping mother in his arms was set
In gold. “Do you not hear the songs that guide
Us through and to the light?” he asked. She tried
To speak, so it seemed. She was not old.
Her eyes opened. “Joseph,” she said. “Not yet,”

He said, “but soon.” She saw and smiled. “I told
Them you would come for me.” She closed her eyes.
He met her at the singing of the gold.

#34, The Psalm of Christ: Forty Poems on the Twenty Second Psalm,
by Chad Walsh

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

This is a poem in Welsh with a translation into English in which the author, former miner and librarian Einion Evans (1926 –), a Nonconformist, makes a tender and perceptive apology for his own and for his contemporaries’ lack of reverence for the Virgin Mary. In so doing he speaks for so many of us, Catholic and Protestant.
Fr Ambrose
ballinagree.freeservers.com/fendigaid.html

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Y Fendigaid Fair / The Blessed Mary

The Blessed Mary

We turned our backs on you, Virgin Mary,
And respected you less than a rag doll from a fair;
In the blazing light of Christ and his eternal radiance
Our eyes were blinded to your great part.

Your sincerity we doubted a hundred times, yes,
And we treated you like some cheap local girl.
We had forgotten that you were God’s means
To place his only son among the living.

Your sleepless nights, who has counted them?
Your son was mocked, yet you loved Him more,
And no one but He and you can really know
What anguish was yours on Calvary.

Listen to us tonight in your heaven above,
Accept your due respect, holy virgin,
And forgive now every disrespectful word
That came from our lips, O Blessed Mary.

Y Fendigaid Fair

Troisom ein cefnau arnat, Forwyn Fair,
A’th barchu’n llai na doli glwt o ffair;
Yng ngolau llachar Crist a’i fythol wawr
Dallwyd ein llygaid i’th gyfraniad mawr.

Amheuwyd ganwaith dy ddidwylledd, do,
A gwnaethpwyd di fel merched rhad y fro.
Anghofiwyd mai tydi oedd cyfrwng Duw
I ddod a’i unig fab i blith y byw.

Dy nosau effro, ‘oes a’i rhifodd hwy?
Gwawdiwyd dy fab, ond ceraist Ef yn fwy,
Ac ni wyr neb yn iawn ond Ef a thi
Pa ingoedd ddaeth i’th ran ar Galfari.

Gwrando ni heno yn dy nef uwchben,
Derbyn dy barch dyledus, forwyn wen,
A maddau’n awr bob rhyw amharchus air
Ddaeth dros ein gwefus, o Fendigaid Fair.

©: Einion Evans, 1969.

The author, Einion Evans, from Flintshire, was born into a typical Nonconformist family in 1926. The son of a miner he himself worked in Point of Ayr Colliery as a young man. Later he joined the Flintshire County Library. He won many prizes at local eisteddfodau. In 1983 he won the bardic chair at the National Eisteddfod for a poem arising out of his grief following the death of his only child, Ennis (herself a promising writer) a few years earlier.

Translation: Wales Famine Forum.

ballinagree.freeservers.com/fendigaid.html Cyhoeddiwyd yn / published in The Green Dragon No 11, Summer 2002