MATER MISERICORDIAE

A poem composed by Sister Mary Eileen Scott toward the end of the Second World War and published in AMERICA on May 12, 1945. It seems very relevant more than 75 years later…

MATER MISERICORDIAE

(Saint Herman, the Criple, wrote the Salve Regina)

Our lady walks the desolated lands

To save them from the conquest of despair;

Her eyes are deep with comfort, and her hands

Are eloquent of prayer.

 

With sacramental touch and healing lips

She bends above each charred and lonely door

To lift the silence of the sad eclipse

Where first-born sons have passed, to come no more.

 

She only brings to fruitfulness the seed

That war has sown in tears and blasphemy

And startles to reality the deed

Unborn in helplessness and agony.

 

Our lady walks the sterile, darkened days,

And mercy in her steps undesecrate

Floods the long shadow and the pathless ways

Of unregenerate hate.

 

To acres bare of hope or of surprise

Deprived alike of vision and release,

She brings compassion and the glad surmise

Of  loveliness returning and of peace.

 

Spring is forever; roses still may bloom;

Where she has passed no alien stars may glow

Deceptive, nor the cross distorted loom

A clutching shadow where the fires burn low.

 

Our Lady walks the roads of hate and strife,

Her veil upon a cleansing wind unfurled,

Herman the Cripple's dream of Hope and Life

And Sweetness folding in a stricken world.

 

Sister Saint Miriam of the Temple, CND