Literature is the product of the pen

Luky;
Literature, being the product of the pen of a living, breathing human being, relies for its existence on trends of style and behaviour current among the members of the generation for whom it is composed. Such trends, once they have been encompassed by the writer, are incorporated into the text before being transmitted to the reader. Though subtly modified by the writer's individual stance, the text would nonetheless normally be expected to reflect the prevailing customs and beliefs of the era. Some of these beliefs and customs may since have perished. However, a study of English poetry from its earliest traceable beginnings until the present reveals that composition of poetry in veneration of Mary of Nazareth was practised almost continually until the second half of the twentieth century.

Therefore, though it is perceived as having currently encountered an obstruction - as in fact it has intermittently done before - it has persisted for well over a millennium, notwithstanding the fact that the idiom may have changed somewhat along the way.It may be presumed that the manuscripts that have survived the centuries owe their continued availability to the fact that the civilisations which preserved them for posterity deemed them both worthy of conservation and representative of the most commonly-held views of their epoch.

The tenor of the poetry in honour of Mary that has come down to us from Anglo-Saxon times indicates that even at that time hyperdulia was a prominent part of the religious customs of the English Christian, showing the prophecy of the Virgin that all generations would call her blessed to have been fulfilled in England - and consequently in the countries where English is used as the medium of speech and writing - by means of Marian poetry. The sheer volume of surviving examples of this poetic genre in English alone is a sign that Mary of Nazareth held a place of honour in the hearts of the earlier generations of English Christians. They refer to her as "Our Lady" and to their country as "Mary's Dowry".

A selection from poets whose work includes poetry in praise of Mary produces some interesting quotations. In Christ I, the Virgin Mary is addressed as a maiden ring-adorned who will thus send/heaven-homeward with ever pure heart/her bright treasure. St. Godric in the twelfth century calls her: Cristes bur/Maidenes clenhad, moderes flur
[chamber/bower of Christ, virgin among maidens, flower of motherhood]. She is named Our blisful lady, Cristes moder dere by Chaucer and Spice, flowr delice of paradise/That baire the glorius graine [spice, fleur-de-lis of paradise/that bore the glorious seed] by William Dunbar.

In his poem Nativitie, John Donne (1573-1631) speaks of her deare wombe in which immensitie (is) cloysterd. The poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) hails Mary as Woman above all women glorified/our tainted nature's solitary boast.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) addresses Mary as his wild web, wondrous robe, while Coventry Patmore (1823-1896) asks whether Joseph's sisters wondered what their brother could see in a mild silent little maid like (Mary).
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) in Ballade of Illegal Oranaments in the twentieth century requests Prince Jesus to bestow on him, when departing from this earth, the privilege ...to see/A Female Figure with a Child.

The poet Francis Thompson (1859-1907) in his Essay on Shelley wrote of the days when poetry was "the lesser sister and helpmate of the Church; the minister to the mind, as the Church was to the soul". A renascence of inspired poetry was taking place at the time as, like Thompson himself, poets of the calibre of Keble, Newman, the Rossettis and Hopkins, to mention but a few, were using their talents to praise and honour the Creator.

*Photograph taken with permission by Rev. Catherine