5.13.2012

Poem of the Week CXLVII

For Mother's Day, honoring the month of Ma(r)y...


Regina Angelorum
G.K. Chesterton

Our Lady went into a strange country,

Our Lady, for she was ours,
And had run on the little hills behind the houses

And pulled small flowers;
But she rose up and went into a strange country

With strange thrones and powers.

And there were giants in the land she walked in,

Tall as their toppling towns,

With heads so high in heaven, the constellations

Served them for crowns;

And their feet might have forded like a brook the abysses
Where Babel drowns.

They were girt about with the wings of morning and evening,

Furled and unfurled,

Round the speckled sky where our small spinning planet

Like a top is twirled;

And the swords they waved were the unending comets

That shall end the world.

And moving in innocence and in accident,

She turned the face
That none has ever looked on without loving

On the Lords of Space;

And one hailed her with her name in our own country

That is full of grace.

Our Lady went into a strange country

And they crowned her queen,

For she needed never to be stayed or questioned

But only seen;

And they were broken down under unbearable beauty

As we have been.

But ever she walked till away in the last high places,

One great light shone

From the pillared throne of the king of all the country

Who sat thereon;

And she cried aloud as she cried under the gibbet

For she saw her son.

Our Lady wears a crown in a strange country,

The crown he gave,

But she has not forgotten to call to her old companions

To call and crave;

And to hear her calling a man might arise and thunder

On the doors of the grave.

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