Stabat Mater

“ In the churches—the wondrous mediæval structures which were newly built at that time—songs of spasmodic grief like the Stabat Mater, or of tragic terror such as the Dies iræ, were echoing under the high-vaulted arches, and the fear of God was upon the people. In a great movement of this kind it is but to be expected that women played no little part ”

“ This scholar of Cambridge, and this monk of Cluni, have given to the religious world the sweetest and dearest religious poem that our language contains. Dr. Neale says that he looks upon the lines of Bernard "as the most lovely, in the same way that the Dies Iræ is the most sublime, and the Stabat Mater the most pathetic of mediæval poems," but his own poem may claim more justly that word. The Celestial Country is better than De Contemptu Mundi. The beautiful simplicity of its artless, childlike lines portrays more naturally the fervid imagery of the monk. ”

“ While perceiving, scarce believing,
we bring them perilously near to the absurd.
In a word, free translations do not catch the delicate pathos of the Stabat Mater, and are not echoes of its melody. I have hitherto had an occasion to say that a translator may well make three translations of a poem; one to portray its structure, that is, its measure, melody, movement and rhyme ”

“ At seven years old, she began to listen with great attention to the music she had heard in the church, which suggested to her parents, the idea of having her taught to play on the piano-forte, and soon after to sing. In three or four years time, she was able to accompany herself on the organ, in the [Pg 124] Stabat Mater of Pergolesi, of which she sung the first soprano, or upper part, in the church of St. Augustin, at Vienna, in the presence of the Empress Queen; who was so touched with her performance and misfortune, that she settled a pension on her for life. ”

“ One of the most notable female figures in German music was Maria Theresa von Paradies. Born at Vienna in 1759, she met with an accident when three years old, and became blind for life. Even with this drawback, however, her musical aptitude was so great that her parents were justified in letting her begin regular studies and procuring the best teachers for her. At the age of eleven she appeared in public, singing the soprano part of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, and playing her own accompaniment157 on the organ. This interested the Empress Maria Theresa, who procured the best of teachers for her. ”

“ Of his church works there are now in the Royal Chapel at Munich 26 Masses, 2 Requiems, 3 Stabat Maters, and a quantity of graduales, offertoires, vespers, etc. For the Protestant court chapel he wrote 7 cantatas, 2 oratorios, a German Stabat Mater, and smaller anthems.
Winter's strong points were just declamation, agreeable melody, brilliant choral writing, and rich instrumentation, which he never suffered to overpower the voices. His weakness was in counterpoint, which he had never found an opportunity of mastering thoroughly. As a whole his church music is preferable to his operas ”

“ In 1847 he returned to Dehn and immediately composed an enormous mass of music, including a second trio, 30 vocal canons, several sonatas, a Mass, a Stabat Mater; he also wrote a number of translations of old French poems, which are classics of their kind. ”

“ The concluding lines of the extract given at page 4, are in the original:
"Si tua nuncia prævenit uncia, surge, fequaris;
Expete limina, nulla gravamina jam verearis.
Si datur uncia, stat prope gratia Pontificalis;
Sin procul hæc valet, hæc tibi lex manet est schola talis."
The ninth and tenth stanzas of the Stabat Mater are more literally rendered in the following than in the version of Lord Lindsay. They also show the inability of the English double rhyme to express the pathos which inverts the Latin. ”

“ The second of the new translations is by that accomplished author, two of whose remarkable renderings of the Dies Iræ already enrich this work. Of the version now given a distinguished scholar says, " The English double rhyme rarely expresses the melody and pathos of the Latin. Dr. Abraham Coles, of Newark, has probably best succeeded in a faithful rendering of the Mater Dolosa."—Dr. Philip Schaff.
A further exposition of the Stabat Mater is given in the newly found companion-hymn, Stabat Mater Speciosa, with its translation, the last work of Dr. John Mason Neale. ”

“ For long years the family of the benign and gracious mother, whose wisdom was lavished upon her children, consisted of sons alone, but now, with the advent of "sweeter manners, purer laws," daughters have come to her also, and the alumnae, "the sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair," share in the best gifts their parent can bestow. To Earth also, the term Alma Mater has been applied, and the great nourishing mother of all was indeed the first teacher of man, the first university of the race. ”

“ He declared she was not taken ill in the morning—not until quite late in the day—but that she was a little restless and nervous, and his mother had stayed to cheer her.
"Mother is such a bright, calm-minded, capable old body," he said—as if I were a dull, hysterical fool—"and she has had such swarms upon swarms of children, and such oceans of sick-nursing, and Phyllis is so fond of her, and as you were not get-at-able, Mater dear——"
Oh, it was sickening! I hadn't patience to listen to him, with his "Mater dears" and his hypocritical pretences. ”

“ You can not separate and classify these acquisitions and tell who taught you this, who gave you that, but the diploma you receive witnesses your possession. To-night your novitiate ends. Your Alma Mater will watch anxiously, lovingly, the line of light which marks your past. Think not, it makes no matter if your taper vanish. One spark extinguished, leaves darkness in its place. Each new thought which you may awaken, each new aspiration you may enkindle, each new impulse for good you may stimulate, flashes back to her a thrill of joy and makes the fire on her altar burn more brightly. ”

“ No, we did not say them, for mother taught us to think and pray the prayer—to wish what we said, as it were; and we got into that habit, Jill and I, so that at any time when praying, with our hearts wandering, as it were, we believed the good angels never could hear that prayer, and never bear it away to the good Father on the great white throne of grace.
I dare say few boys love their mother so much as we loved our beautiful mother, but then one always does think just in that way about one’s own love. None other can be like it. ”

“ From the time the maiden of five trudges away to the kindergarten or primary school, on through the twelve years which terminate the high school course, and perhaps a supplementary four years of collegiate work, she has toiled and hoped for that crowning glory of which her diploma is the exponent. Then what becomes of her?
Notwithstanding the current impression that for the girl graduate commencements and weddings are consecutive events, statistics fail to corroborate the fact. In our own Alma Mater, one of the most venerable among schools for women, fifty two per cent. ”

“ Now, to every Oxford man, his Lady Mother, or Alma Mater, in the transcendental sense, is his university, occupying nearly as high a place in his heart as Our Lady occupies in that of the devout Catholic. ”

“ Through the long centuries Nature has been the mother, nurse, and teacher of man.
Other Mother-Goddesses.
Among other "mother-goddesses" of ancient Italy we find Maia Mater, Flora Mater, both deities of growth and reproduction; Lua Mater, "the loosing mother," a goddess of death; Acca Larentia, the mother of the Lares (Acca perhaps = Atta, a child-word for mother, as Lippert suggests) ; Mater matuta, "mother of the dawn," a goddess of child-birth, worshipped especially by married women, and to whom there was erected a temple at Cære. ”

“ Once more she kissed us, then auntie led us out, saying we must leave mamma a little while for her good. We would do anything for ma’s good, even to going away into the schoolroom—which never before had looked so grim and cheerless—and squatting on our goatskin to cry. Every now and then poor Jill would say—
“Don’t you cry so, Jack.”
And every now and then I would make the same request to him.
They say there is no love equal to that a mother bears for a child; but tell me this, ye who have known it, what love exceeds that which a fond and sensitive child bears for a mother? ”

“ The average young man who enters the ministry of the Church of England has been reasonably mothered by a university education; and when he takes the plunge it is not total immersion. His mother—his Alma Mater—still holds him by the heel. ”

“ Bishop Neale said in establishing the school that it was founded "to teach the female youth of America," and truly did he prophecy and plan, for hither came the best of the "female youth of America" for many years, and to-day some of our most distinguished women claim the Georgetown Convent of Visitation as their Alma Mater. ”

“ If, mother," he said, seeing that all other arguments failed, "if, dear mother, I go abroad, I may forget my grief; I may live it down. If I stay here at home, and brood over it, as sure as the -sun will rise to-morrow, mother, in a year or two at most I shall be in the grave. I am not a boy now, mother. I might have been a boy two days ago; I am now a man. But 'I will not be a soldier, though to me it means life, without your consent I see a life of happiness yet in store for me if I go. If I stay I only see "
" What, Willie ? " ”

“ The parting from Alma Mater is a second leaving of home—and this time for the great world. There is no staving off the battle of life now—the tents are struck, the camp-fires put out, and one must be on the march. ”

“ Mary engages all those children who have need of a mother to come to her, as to the most tender of all mothers. The love of all the mothers in the world, says the pious Nieremberg, is no more than a shadow compared with that love which Mary bears to each one of us. ”

“ In short, Mary is presented to us as the mother, and the mother alone, seeking no other sphere. Like a true mother she passed out of self into her son, and the life that she lived was in him; and in this sacred self-abnegation she must forever remain, the one ideal type of perfect motherhood. ”

“ Stapleton relighted his pipe, and for nearly half-an-hour smoked in silence. What Mary’s thoughts were I cannot positively assert; but I imagined that, like myself, she was thinking about her mother’s conduct and her own. I certainly was making the comparison, and we neither of us spoke a word.
“Well,” continued Stapleton, at last, “I married your mother, Mary, and I only hope that any man who may take a fancy to you, will not have so much trouble with his wife as I had. ”

“ The mother, though a Protestant, and strict and conscientious in the discharge of all the duties of her church, and not without a struggle in parting with her child and consigning her to the charge of Jesuits, yielded in this case to the malign influence of fashion, as many a fond mother does even in this our own land of equal rights and far-famed, though mock equality—sent her beautiful daughter, her earthly idol, to the school of these nuns. ”

“ The mater! He owed her so much in life. And now--now he was contemplating, more than contemplating, making definite, absolutely definite, a decision of which she could never approve, which might even cost him her love.
The mater! Ever since that moment of crisis in Hyde Park--through luncheon, through the rainy afternoon which followed luncheon, over the dinner she had insisted on his sharing--Ronnie had been watching her face, speculating about her, wondering what she would say if she knew. ”

“ Stowe motherhood was literally a religion. She knew in her heart what the love of a mother could be, and she said, “God invented mothers’ hearts, and He certainly has the pattern in His own.” So she found within herself a proof of the love of God, a beautiful path to spiritual attainment that is open to every woman that learns in any way to understand the meaning of a mother’s love. ”

“ Let every one consider, then, how much it must have cost Mary to sacrifice on the cross the life of a Son so amiable, and what strength of mind she must have exercised in this act. Behold the most fortunate of mothers, because she is the mother of a God, but she is at the same time a mother most worthy of compassion, because the most afflicted; being the mother of a Son whom she saw destined to the cross from the day when he was given her for a Son! ”

“ The Mother was seated at her writing-table, and one strong electric lamp shed its vivid light from under a perfectly dark shade upon the papers that lay under her hand and scattered before her—bills, household accounts, doctors' and nurses' reports, opened telegrams, humble-looking letters written on ruled paper and smart notes in fashionable handwritings. People who imagine that the Mother Superior of a nursing order which has branches in many parts of the world spends her time in meditation and prayer are much mistaken. ”

“ Kiss me, dear papa; I will correct all my faults, and endeavour to be like mamma."
"God bless you, my child, for having formed such a project! but you are very young to make even the attempt."
"Not too young, I hope. I shall hardly succeed at first, but the recollection of mamma will come to my assistance. I know what she used to do, and I will endeavour to imitate her. I will come and see you in your study, and be always ready to give up my own occupations to please you. I will give Stephen his lessons. I will keep the accounts. You shall see how steady I will be; only try me, papa." ”

“ On the 22nd of February, 1639, Mother Mary of the Incarnation bade a last farewell to the convent at Tours. It is easy to picture the grief of the Sisters at losing the beloved Mother whose example had been to all a perpetual stimulus to perfection, and whose counsels had encouraged so many to tread bravely the narrow path that leads to sanctity. The regret of the pupils for their saintly teacher, was the highest tribute to the gentleness and charity which, had so greatly endeared her to them. ”