Marian Poetry

Marian poetry is the name given to poems dedicated to Christ’s mother, Mary.

Today’s date, February 11, is the day that the Roman Catholic saint, Bernadette Soubirous, first saw the Virgin Mary in the grotto at Lourdes in 1858, and yes, I did find a poem dedicated to that event. It is on part of The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute’s site, on a page titled: Poems Dealing With Marian Apparitions:

Spring at Lourdes

In the clefts of the rock the dove,
In the hollows of the wall
The beautiful one, my love,
Comely, slender, and tall.

The flowers at last in our land –
Sandaling slim white feet,
The voice of the turtle, and
A voice that is strange and sweet.

Here let the heart abide,
For winter is over and done
Where Heaven is opened wide
On a woman clothed with the sun.

by Sr. Mary St. Virginia, Cyril Robert
Mary Immaculate: God’s Mother and Mine.
Poughkeepsie, New York: Marist Press, 1946.

There are several other poems on the page dedicated to the little asthmatic French shepherdess. The visions of Bernardette are perhaps as widely known as those of Joan of Arc (although The Maid of Orleans identified her visitors as St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret, and never made any claim to seeing the Virgin Mary). There are also some poems about the visions of La Salette, Our Lady of Czestochowa and one of the earliest visionaries, St. Bernard.

In addition to a statistical study of Apparitions of the Past, there’s a list of Twentieth Century Apparitions, showing who saw the vision and the Roman Catholic Church’s position on the credibility of the incident. Pretty interesting reading.