Thy white hand with blossoms
     Their chaplets enhances,
     Thou show’st them the dances
     Of God’s Paradise. 
     ’Mid radiant skies
     Thou gather’st heavenly roses.

The Italian Franciscan monk Giacomo of Verona also wrote poems to the “Queen of the Heavenly Meadows”.  “On the right hand of Christ sits Mary, more lovely than the flowers in the meadows and the half-opened rose-buds.  Before her face stand the heavenly hosts singing jubilant songs in her praise, but she adorns her knights with garlands and gives them roses.”  Just as Pons of Capduelh describes the transfiguration of his earthly mistress, Jacopone describes Mary’s ascent into Heaven, where she is received by the angels singing songs of jubilee, their sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, replaced by a joyful sancta, sancta, sancta—­a goddess has been received in the place of God.

Gottfried of Strassburg, the author of the sensuous and passionate epic poem “Tristan and Isolde,” composed a long poem in honour of Mary couched in the well-known terms of the loving worshipper: 

     Thou vale of roses,—­violet-dell,
     Thou joy that makest hearts to swell,
     Eternal well
     Of valour; Queen of Heaven! 
     Thou rosy dawn, thou morning-red,
     Thou steadfast friend when hope has fled,
     The living bread,
     Oh!  Lady, hast thou given.

     Thou sheen of flow’rs with love alight,
     Thou bridal crown, all maids’ delight,
     Thou art bedight
     With heaven’s golden splendour!

     Thou of all sweetness sweetest shine,
     Thou sweeter than the sweetest wine,
     The sweetness thine,
     Is my salvation ever. 
     Thou art a potion sweet of love,
     Sweetly pervading heaven above,
     To sailors rough
     Sang syrens sweeter never.

     Thou enterest through eye and ear,
     Senses and soul pervading,
     Thou givest to the heart great cheer,
     A guerdon dear,
     A glory never fading.

The poet who wrote of Isolde’s love potion here calls the Queen of Heaven a potion sweet of love, a strange metaphor to use in connection with the Mary of dogma.  Another characteristic frequently alluded to is her sweet perfume, an attribute which we to-day do not look upon as exclusively celestial.

Quaintly delicate and tender are the love-songs of Brother Hans, an otherwise unknown monk of the fourteenth century.  He himself tells us that he deserted his earthly mistress for the Queen of Heaven.  Perhaps the dualism between earthly and transcendent love has never been expressed more clearly than by him; for in his case the worshipping love did not gradually lead up to Mary, the essence of womanhood, but an earthly love had to be killed so that the pure heavenly love could live.

     Mary!  Gentle mistress mine! 
     I humbly kneel before you;
     All my heart and soul are thine.