The Immaculate Conception

Fell the snow on the festival’s vigil
And surpliced the city in white;
I wonder who wove the pure flakelets?
Ask the Virgin, or God, or the night.

It fitted the Feast: ’twas a symbol,
And earth wore the surplice at morn,
As pure as the vale’s stainless lily
For Mary, the sinlessly born;

For Mary, conceived in all sinlessness;
And the sun, thro’ the clouds of the East,
With the brightest and fairest of flashes,
Fringed the surplice of white for the Feast.

And round the horizon hung cloudlets,
Pure stoles to be worn by the Feast;
While the earth and the heavens were waiting
For the beautiful Mass of the priest.

I opened my window, half dreaming;
My soul went away from my eyes,
And my heart began saying “Hail Marys”
Somewhere up in the beautiful skies,

Where the shadows of sin never rested;
And the angels were waiting to hear
The prayer that ascends with “Our Father”,
And keeps hearts and the heavens so near.

And all the day long — can you blame me?
“Hail Mary”, “Our Father”, I said;
And I think that the Christ and His Mother
Were glad of the way that I prayed.

And I think that the great, bright Archangel
Was listening all the day long
For the echo of every “Hail Mary”
That soared thro’ the skies like a song,

From the hearts of the true and the faithful,
In accents of joy or of woe,
Who kissed in their faith and their fervor
The Festival’s surplice of snow.

I listened, and each passing minute,
I heard in the lands far away
“Hail Mary”, “Our Father”, and near me
I heard all who knelt down to pray.

Pray the same as I prayed, and the angel,
And the same as the Christ of our love —
“Our Father”, “Hail Mary”, “Our Father” —
Winging just the same sweet flight above.

Passed the morning, the noon: came the even —
The temple of Christ was aflame
With the halo of lights on three altars,
And one wore His own Mother’s name.

Her statue stood there, and around it
Shone the symbolic stars. Was their gleam,
And the flowerets that fragranced her altar,
Were they only the dream of a dream?

Or were they sweet signs to my vision
Of a truth far beyond mortal ken,
That the Mother had rights in the temple
Of Him she had given to men?

Was it wronging her Christ-Son, I wonder,
For the Christian to honor her so?
Ought her statue pass out of His temple?
Ask the Feast in its surplice of snow.

Ah, me! had the pure flakelets voices,
I know what their white lips would say;
And I know that the lights on her altar
Would pray with me if they could pray.

Methinks that the flowers that were fading —
Sweet virgins that die with the Feast,
Like martyrs, upon her fair altar —
If they could, they would pray with the priest;

And would murmur “Our Father”, “Hail Mary”,
Till they drooped on the altar in death,
And be glad in their dying for giving
To Mary their last sweetest breath.