Ave Maria!  Mother blest,
To whom, caressing and caressed,
   Clings the eternal Child;
Favoured beyond Archangels’ dream,
When first on Thee with tenderest gleam
   Thy new-born Saviour smiled:-

Ave Maria! thou whose name
All but adoring love may claim,
   Yet may we reach thy shrine;
For He, thy Son and Saviour, vows
To crown all lowly lofty brows
   With love and joy like thine.

Blessed is the womb that bare Him—­blessed
The bosom where His lips were pressed,
   But rather blessed are they
Who hear His word and keep it well,
The living homes where Christ shall dwell,
   And never pass away.

ST. MARK’S DAY

And the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other.  Acts xv. 30.  Compare 2 Tim. iv. 11.  Take Mark, and bring him with thee:  for he is profitable to me for the ministry.

Oh! who shall dare in this frail scene
On holiest happiest thoughts to lean,
   On Friendship, Kindred, or on Love? 
Since not Apostles’ hands can clasp
Each other in so firm a grasp
   But they shall change and variance prove.

Yet deem not, on such parting sad
Shall dawn no welcome dear and glad: 
   Divided in their earthly race,
Together at the glorious goal,
Each leading many a rescued soul,
   The faithful champions shall embrace.

For e’en as those mysterious Four,
Who the bright whirling wheels upbore
   By Chebar in the fiery blast. 
So, on their tasks of love and praise
This saints of God their several ways
   Right onward speed, yet join at last.

And sometimes e’en beneath the moon
The Saviour gives a gracious boon,
   When reconciled Christians meet,
And face to face, and heart to heart,
High thoughts of holy love impart
   In silence meek, or converse sweet.

Companion of the Saints! ’twas thine
To taste that drop of peace divine,
   When the great soldier of thy Lord
Called thee to take his last farewell,
Teaching the Church with joy to tell
   The story of your love restored.

O then the glory and the bliss,
When all that pained or seemed amiss
   Shall melt with earth and sin away! 
When saints beneath their Saviour’s eye,
Filled with each other’s company,
   Shall spend in love th’ eternal day!

ST. PHILIP AND ST. JAMES.

Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted:  but the rich in that he is made low.  St. James i. 9. 10.

Dear is the morning gale of spring,
   And dear th’ autumnal eve;
But few delights can summer bring
   A Poet’s crown to weave.

Her bowers are mute, her fountains dry,
   And ever Fancy’s wing
Speed’s from beneath her cloudless sky
   To autumn or to spring.