Alfred Gurney

“ A CLOISTERED garden was the place
Where Mary grew, God's perfect flower;
One, only one, discerned her grace,
And visited her bower.
God's choice was his; by love made strong
To guard the Mother of the King ”

“ Like stars down-gazing through a fleecy cloud,
⁠Dimly discerned as morning draweth near
⁠Spreading a radiant pall upon night's bier.
The blessed thing the Sign doth signify
They partly know, and are made glad thereby.
But more the Mother knows, and more she sees
⁠Than soaring angel or than climbing saint;
Her heart familiar grown with mysteries
⁠Of God's own working under love's constraint,
⁠The remedy she knows for man's complaint. ”

“ Many have felt this picture—at once so serene and so impassioned—to be a revelation. As we yield ourselves to its fascination and search further and further into its depths, we feel that Faber’s words justify themselves: 'Christian Art, rightly considered, is at once a theology and a worship; a theology which has its own method of teaching, its own ways of representation, its own devout discoveries, its own varying opinions, all of which are beautiful so long as they are in subordination to the mind of the Church. ...Art is a revelation from heaven, and a mighty power for God. ”

“ Through ever-open gates they press,
⁠A new and living way they tread,
⁠So gain they the true ’House of Bread,’
A garden for a wilderness.
A flight it seems to us; to them
⁠It is a going forth to win
⁠The world from Satan and from sin,
And build the New Jerusalem. ”

“ Note F. The Gospel Songs.
The Tree of Life is the real Christmas Tree. Its underwoven roots support the cradle; its branches, overarching with many a blossom and many a cluster, form the canopy of the Heavenly Babe, the Darling of God and of man. ”

“ He sings of 'peace,’ 'salvation,’ 'light:’
His lovely words we take
For consolation night by night,
Until God’s morning break.
Then, when our dazzled eyes grow dim,
Breathed with our parting breath
The old man's sweet, heart-soothing hymn
Glad welcome gives to death.
We too what Simeon saw may see—
The Mother undefiled,
Our hearts enfold as blissfully
The Everlasting Child! ”

“ Who with anointed eye
Discerns a sacrament of love
In earth and sea and sky,
And finds himself at love’s behest
Constrained to prophesy.
Love is of loveliness the root,
Love is of life the spring ”

“ AN EMPTY CRADLE.
All empty stands a little cradle-bed,
⁠A mother's falling tears the only sound;
⁠But not of earth her thoughts, nor underground;
Up-gazing she discerns the Fountain-head
Of life ”

“ The Witness borne by all to One,
Who holds in His Right Hand,
Like lamps that round an altar burn,
All lights that shine, all words that be
Crowned are the men whose hearts discern
Their King’s Epiphany. ”

“ NEW YEAR'S EVE.
God grant through coming years and days
⁠Our beating hearts may be
The harps that celebrate His praise
⁠Who loves eternally!
No ache can be without relief
⁠When Love Himself draws near ”

“ Dispelling doubt and fear
With her celestial minstrelsy,
Our Miriam doth cheer
The men whose homeward-going hearts
Are loyal to their King;
When all from her have learnt their parts,
Then shall creation sing! ”

“ Christ is the Living Word of God,
⁠His Poem and His Prophecy;
The homeward way His Feet have trod
⁠Mankind must travel by.
And every man, God's child and priest,
⁠Is pledged to ministry divine,
Who sees the Ruler of life's feast
⁠Turn water into wine ”

“ To them the oracles of God are indeed living, because they discern therein not certain words about Christ, but Christ the Word Himself; reading them by the light of the great Tradition which lives and grows with the life and growth of the Spirit-bearing Church—the consciousness of the real Presence of Christ in her and in her Scriptures alike. It is in truth no unwritten Tradition, for it is inscribed in spiritual characters upon the fleshy tables of the heart by the Holy Ghost Himself, the Finger of God. ”

“ Behold! the world's inheritance,
⁠The treasure-trove of happy homes;
⁠Whereby the poorest hut becomes
A fairy-palace of romance.
A cradle is the mother's shrine:
⁠Two lamps o'erhang it—her sweet eyes. ”

“ Life’s harvest is not reaped until
⁠The Christ within has grown
To perfect manhood, and self-will
⁠By love is overthrown.
Such manhood gained concludes the strife
⁠That makes the babe a boy;
’Tis thus the seed becomes a life,
⁠The life becomes a joy. ”

“ The Gospel songs express the joy with which by the humble and simple and pure-hearted this Plant of Renown is discovered; [Pg 79] this House of Bread visited. They come from the lips of a maiden who is a mother, of an ancient who is a child, of a priest who is a prophet. When such fountains of song are unsealed, the music belongs rather to heaven than to earth. ”

“ But the fuller revelation comes out of human nature itself, when taken into fellowship with God. The elect lady, representative of humanity, is from one point of view, looking at fundamental relations, daughter, spouse, mother; from another, looking at essential characteristics, faith, hope, and love. The place of meeting, that is dawning consciousness, is the fairyland of phenomenal existence. ”

“ The children's ’house of bread.’
Where Jesus’ arms encircle them,
With milk and honey fed:—
Such is the Church, whose altar-gates
Stand ever open, when
The board is furnished where He waits
To feast the hearts of men. ”

“ All men, like these sister-graces, must join hands and hearts. Thus shall be woven a threefold cord, divinely strong and unbreakable; and the testimony, reiterated by the still small voice of a Divine Whisperer, shall be accepted by all, because realised in all: 'Love makes a unity of three; 'and' God is love. ”

“ The Catholic Church by her methods, no less than by her Sacraments, her Scriptures, and her Creeds, is ever maintaining her protest against the limitations by which all merely human systems are disfigured. She is ever bearing her impassioned witness to Him Who is 'the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' This is the real significance of the solemnities that accompany her Epiphany observance. ”

“ Growing love will overthrow;
Churls who say ’We go’ and go not
Love’s rebuke must undergo;
All who love's insignia show not,
Who on love themselves bestow not,
Love, full grown, shall lay them low. ”

“ God's story has no end; it is more wonderful than anything [Pg 75] wonderland can show; lovelier than the loveliest thing said or sung of fairyland. The Gospel and the Creed are a part of that story; and with this our little poem is concerned. It speaks of God's garden—paradise regained—a renewed earth, wherein a trinity in unity, observable in all things, testifies of Him, a shadow cast from above. ”

“ It is the Incarnation that justifies all joy, and song is the expression of joy. The Gospel Songs all celebrate the Great Nativity. Birth [Pg viii] and marriage are the occasions most sacred to mirth and music among men; and Christmas is at once the Birthday and the Marriage Festival of Humanity. ”

“ To His pupils all things are Divine words variously embodied, and the Word made Flesh is the one all-comprehending Mystery, the eternal, all-revealing, and all-sufficing Sacrament. That Word is a Divine Person, Whose Manhood is a living, abiding, ever-energising Mediatorial Agency. That Word, eternally uttered by the Mouth of God, was in the Incarnation uttered (so to speak) in another language, and made audible and intelligible to man. By this language, common to God and man, the thought of God became man's thought, and the thought of man God's thought. ”

“ On the left we see the massacre of innocents, representing the world, in whose cruel habitations the same outrage is ever being enacted, since all sin is in truth the sin of blood-guiltiness, bringing life into jeopardy. ”

“ Make your music, shame our dumbness,
⁠Till we make reply.
Children's laughter is a music
⁠Flowing from a hidden spring,
Which, though men misdoubt its virtue,
⁠Well is worth discovering;
Slowly dies the heart that knows not
⁠How to laugh and sing. ”

“ Of each, whereby transfigurèd
They clomb the bill of frankincense.
I know not whence or how, they bloomed:
Each sweeter than the sweetest rose
That in the haunted garden grows
Where burns the bush still unconsumed. ”

“ Bid the shadows flee!
Jesu, Thou art swift to bless,
Strong to comfort, skilled to heal;
Failure is with Thee success,
Woe the forerunner of weal;
Every stroke is a caress,
Every crust a meal. ”

“ There comes a Child, forth from His Bosom sent
⁠To rule the feast of life, His Bread and Cup,
⁠His purpose making plain with man to sup.
Out-streams the light, accomplished is the Sign,
A Virgin-Mother clasps a Babe Divine. ”

“ I quote the following passage from Canon Westcott’s weighty contribution to the discussion of a subject second to none in interest and importance—'The Relation of Christianity to Art:’ 'In the Madonna di San Sisto Raffaelle has rendered the idea of Divine motherhood and Divine sonship in intellible forms. No one can rest in the individual figures. The tremulous fulness of emotion in the face of the Mother, the intense far-reaching gaze of the Child, constrain the beholder to look beyond. ”

“ Whereby, released from slavish fear,
Men are to filial freedom brought.
Three things immutable and sure,
His promise, covenant, and oath,
Reveal God’s purpose, and secure
Whate’er man needs for life and growth. ”

“ The life becomes a joy.
The eyes that weep are eyes that see,
And swift are pilgrim-feet;
Ah! hope at length may come to be
Than memory more sweet.
[Pg 5] So keeping festival to-day,
With children's laughter near,
It is not hard to sing and pray,
'T is hard to doubt or fear.
Father, my heart to Thee I bring,
To Thee my song address;
From Winter pain and toil of Spring
Grows Summer happiness.
[Pg 6]
THE MADONNA DI SAN SISTO. [1] 'The Lord Himself shall give you a sign; behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son.'
Behold, by Raphael shown, Love's sacrament! ”

“ And wove a mystic glory-crown
⁠Around the Sleeper's head.
The silence issues in a song,
⁠It rises and it swells;
E'en than the lark's more blithe and strong,
⁠Sweeter than Philomel's,
His Church's anthem loud and long
⁠The Victim's triumph tells. ”

“ The Four Epiphanies to which the poem refers belong to the Scriptures appointed for the Day itself and the two following Sundays. The first was made to the Wise Men of the East, representing the inspired wisdom of the Gentile world; the second to the Doctors of the Temple, representing the Bible-taught wisdom of the Jews; the third to the Forerunner, the last and greatest of the Prophet-heralds of the Incarnation; the fourth to the Bridegroom and Bride and the wedding guests at Cana of Galilee, representing Humanity, of which the family is the appointed and abiding type. ”