“I was wondering, Carl,” she said, “how I could ever have presumed to call him Dick!”
And so we leave our Edith, as we found her, wondering.
FRAGMENTS OF EARLY ENGLISH POEMS ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN.
To Catholics ... it is a joy and a solace to look back into past centuries, and remember that there were days when our poets drank of a purer fount than that of Castaly; and made it their pride to celebrate in their verse, not Dian nor Proserpine, but the Immaculate Queen of Heaven. Of Chaucer’s devotion to this theme, I have already spoken, but other poets before his time delighted in dedicating their verses to her who, as she inspired the most exquisite designs of the artist’s pencil, has also claimed not the least beautiful productions of the poet’s pen. Thus, one sings of her as ‘Dame Lyfe,’ and describes how
“As she came by the bankes, the boughs eche one,
Lowked to the Ladye, and layd forth their branches,
Blossoms and burgens (new shoots) breathed ful swete,
Flowres bloomed in the path where forth she stepped,
And the gras that was dry greened belive.”
Others, according to their quaint fashion, mixed up English and Latin rhymes in a style which, barbarous as it is, is certainly not deficient in harmony. One little poem, ascribed to a writer in the reign of Henry III., commences thus:
“Of all that is so fayr and bright,
Velut maris stella;
Brighter than the day is light,
Parens et puella.
I crie to The, Thou se to me,
Levedy, preye the Sone for me,
Tam pia,
That Ich mote come to The,
Maria.”
—Christian Schools and Scholars.