TO OUR LADY IN WINTER

TO OUR LADY IN WINTER

Lady, a transient stranger was the snow

in your far Syrian village,

where vine and olive, in the sun's fierce glow,

scarce asked the rich soil's tillage

But how you would have smiled to see it, Sweet!

here in the city's highway,

hastening at dusk with swift and stainless feet

down the long lanes of skyway.

It would have been so eloquent, I know,

in its  untarnished pureness

of what you prized most dear, would not forego

for any honour's sureness.

Its soundless fall - a muting finger laid

on the great city's humming - 

would have recalled to you, O Mother-Maid

the Spirit's noiseless coming.

You would have loved - how much! - to see it fling

a swift, a kindly veiling

of pure compassion on each sordid thing,

hiding earth's every failing.

To soon it wears the grime, in lane and street, 

of traffic and of toiling;

but you, of all earth's daughters, Lady sweet,

were snow beyond her soiling.

Sister M Angelita

Commonweal. February 1929

From 'A Silence full of bells'