# Littell's Living Age/Volume 134/Issue 1725/Ave Maria. A Breton Legend

* AVE MARIA.
* A BRETON LEGEND
* I.
* In the ages of faith, before the day
* When men were too proud to weep or pray,
* There stood in a red-roofed Breton town
* Snugly nestled 'twixt sea and down,
* A chapel for simple souls to meet,
* Nightly, and sing with voices sweet,
* Ave Maria!
* II.
* There was an idiot, palsied, bleared,
* With unkempt locks and a matted beard,
* Hunched from the cradle, vacant-eyed,
* And whose head kept rolling from side to side;
* Yet who, when the sunset glow grew dim,
* Joined with the rest in the twilight hymn,
* Ave Maria!
* III.
* But when they up-got and wended home,
* Those up the hillside; these to the foam,
* He hobbled along in the narrowing dusk,
* Like a thing that is only hull and husk;
* On as he hobbled, chanting still,
* Now to himself, now loud and shrill,
* Ave Maria!
* IV.
* When morning smiled on the smiling deep,
* And the fisherman woke from dreamless sleep,
* And ran up his sail, and trimmed his craft,
* While his little ones leaped on the sand and laughed,
* The senseless cripple would stand and stare,
* Then suddenly holloa his wonted prayer,
* Ave Maria!
* V.
* Others might plough, and reap, and sow,
* Delve in the sunshine, spin in snow,
* Make sweet love in a shelter sweet,
* Or trundle their dead in a winding-sheet;
* But he, through rapture, and pain, and wrong,
* Kept singing his one monotonous song,
* Ave Maria!
* VI.
* When thunder growled from the ravelled wrack,
* And ocean to welkin bellowed back,
* And the lightning sprang from its cloudy sheath,
* And tore through the forest with jagged teeth,
* Then leaped and laughed o'er the havoc wreaked,
* The idiot clapped with his hands, and shrieked,
* Ave Maria!
* VII.
* Children mocked, and mimicked his feet,
* As he slouched or sidled along the street;
* Maidens shrank as he passed them by,
* And mothers with child eschewed his eye;
* And half in pity, half scorn, the folk
* Christened him, from the words be spoke,
* Ave Maria.
* VIII.
* One year when the harvest feasts were done,
* And the mending of tattered nets begun,
* And the kittiwake's scream took a weirder key
* From the wailing wind and the moaning sea,
* He was found, at morn, on the fresh-strewn snow,
* Frozen, and faint, and crooning low,
* Ave Maria!
* IX.
* They stirred up the ashes between the dogs,
* And warmed his limbs by the blazing logs,
* Chafed his puckered and bloodless skin,
* And strove to quiet his chattering chin;
* But, ebbing with unreturning tide,
* He kept on murmuring till he died,
* Ave Maria!
* X.
* Idiot, soulless, brute from birth,
* He could not be buried in sacred earth;
* So they laid him afar, apart, alone,
* Without or a cross, or turf, or stone,
* Senseless clay unto senseless clay,
* To which none ever came nigh to say,
* Ave Maria!
* XI.
* When the meads grew saffron, the hawthorns white,
* And the lark bore his music out of sight,
* And the swallow outraced the racing wave,
* Up from the lonely, outcast grave
* Sprouted a lily, straight and high,
* Such as She bears to whom men cry,
* Ave Maria!
* XII.
* None had planted it, no one knew
* How it had come there, why it grew;
* Grew up strong, till its stately stem
* Was crowned with a snow-white diadem, -
* One pure lily, round which, behold!
* Was written by God in veins of gold,
* "Ave Maria!"
* XIII.
* Over the lily they built a shrine,
* Where are mingled the mystic bread and wine;
* Shrine you may see in the little town
* That is snugly nestled 'twixt deep and down.
* Through the Breton land it hath wondrous fame,
* And it bears the unshriven idiot's name,
* Ave Maria.
* XIV.
* Hunchbacked, gibbering, blear-eyed, halt,
* From forehead to footstep one foul fault,
* Crazy, contorted, mindless-born,
* The gentle's pity, the cruel's scorn,
* Who shall bar you the gates of day,
* So you have simple faith to say,
* Ave Maria?
* Cornhill Magazine.Alfred Austin.