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Home  »  An American Anthology, 1787–1900  »  895 To St. Mary Magdalen

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Benjamin DionysiusHill

895 To St. Mary Magdalen

MID the white spouses of the Sacred Heart,

After its queen, the nearest, dearest thou:

Yet the aureola around thy brow

Is not the virgins’—thine a throne apart.

Nor yet, my Saint, does faith-illumined art

Thy hand with palm of martyrdom endow:

And when thy hair is all it will allow

Of glory to thy head, we do not start.

O more than virgin in thy penitent love!

And more than martyr in thy passionate woe!

Who knelt not with thee on the gory sod,

How should they now sit throned with thee above?

Or where the crown our worship could bestow

Like that long gold which wiped the feet of God?