OFFICIUM PARVUM BEATAE MARIAE VIRGINIS

OFFICIUM PARVUM

BEATAE MARIAE VIRGINIS

What voices, in what languages, before

what altars have reiterated thy

most ancient eulogies, have lifted high

the dim melodious burden of the Psalms?

(their overtones are here, forever more.)

within what moated castles, near what palms,

in what lost country and beneath what sky?

What distance have thy praises come since first

a monarch dreamed about his hillside days,

remembering the wind, the sun, the thirst,

"as in a desert and a pathless place"?

from in principio to nunc is long,

and we who speak but scarcely know the sense

of what we say, live in another tense

than Ananias, Jacob, Zachary,

yet from our uninitiate lips the song

pours like the ointment worth a hundred pence

and bathes the wounded Feet of Royalty.

Sister M Bernetta

America. 31 May 1947

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Officium Parvum Beatae Mariae Virginis - Short Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary
From 'in principio' to 'nunc' - From 'In the begiinning' to 'now'

From 'A Silence full of bells'