GARDENS GIVE MARY GLORY

These are the loveliest of her litanies,

These are gardens where the glad abounding earth

Still gush the Holy Spirit's primal mirth

In endlessly renewed diversities.

These from the faithful and fecund soil

Are generations that have called her blest,

They magnify her always without rest

While man's sad cyclic ages still uncoil.

They beat the perfumed air with noiseless sound,

They ring out her renown, freshly repeat

Her names taught them by men whose pulses beat

With God's great rhythm of the Seasons' round.

Each garden gives her glory, chants her praise

Even in harsh and hostile places where

Men have forgotten gentleness and prayer,

And what still canticles waft through their days.

Who plants a garden builds a carillon

To peal her praises with the pulse of time,

And laud her with the earth's loveliest, lasting chime

In bright, unalterable antiphon.