Poetry

A crack in that exquisite virgin vase,
A funereal shudder of taut strings,
And Mary is gone.  Quake ye angels' wings!
Your roaring rumbles Rome's basilicas,
Beclouds the Arab's cunning algebras
And tolls the knell of everlasting things.
Lulling the infant church a bald boy sings.
His voice foremuses dolce arias.
Abed and strewn with sprays of jasmine sleeps,
In drape, a sweet and saintly mother's heart.
Shall a kinder flower emblossom love?
Unveiled in mystics' cool and dewy deeps,
Serene on a catafalque of verse art,
The loveliness of Mary rests thereof.