MAGNIFICAT

MAGNIFICAT

Hers was no sudden rapture of the pen,

the poet of the Word who holds my heart;

familiar song she sang by night, by day,

with consummate art.

Soft preluding to cradle-lullabies

of star-eyed Babe, - and these her songs are glad –

to visioned Calvaries with their sequent woe,

and these her songs are sad.

With tremulous joy she wrote each variant theme

upon the lilied parchment of her soul:

love’s mute abandon, and the anguished sob

of multitudinous dole.

And all her song, safe hidden in her heart

fraught with a golden music, kept she well

until, for all her care, one song escaped,

and only God may tell

how, on a day, the Spirit unaware

rescued her rapture from oblivious lot;

a robin listened near, as Mary sang

One fair Magnificat.

Sister M Thérèse SDS

Now there is Beauty.  MacMillan.  1940

Used with permission