The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1877-08-09
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AVE MARIA.
A BRETON LEGEND.

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In the ages of faith, before the day
When men were too proud to weep or pray.
There stood in 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
There was an idiot, palsied, bleared.
With unkempt locks. and matted beard.
launched from the cradle, vacant eyed,
And whose head kept rolling from side to side;
And who when the sunset glow grew dim,
Joined with the rest in the twilight hymn,
Ave Maria!
But when they up-got and wended home.
Those up the hillside, those to the foam,
He hobbled along in the narrowing dusk,
Like thing that is only hull and husk,
On as he hobbled, chanting still
Now to himself, now loud and shrill,
Ave Maria
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 ani
laughed,
The senseless cripple would stand and stare,
Then suddenly halloa his wonted prayer,
Ave Maria!
Others might plow, and reap, and SOW,
Delve in the sunshine, spin in the snow,
Make sweet love in shelter sweet.
Or trundle their dead in winding sheet;
But he. through rapture, and pain, and wrong,
Kept singing his one .nonotonous song.
Ave Maria
When thunder growled from the raveled wrack
And ocean to welkin beloved back,
And the lightning sprang from its cloudy sheath
And tore through the forest with Jagged teeth,
Then leaped and laughed DER the havoc wreaked
The idiot clapped with his hands and shrieked,
Ave Maria!
One year when the harvest feasts were done,
And the mending OF tattered nets begun,
And the kittiwake's scream took weirder key
From the wailing wind and moaning sea.
He was found, at morn, on the fresh strewn snow
Frozen, and faint and grooming low,
Ave Maria
They stirred up the ashes between the dogs,
And warmed his limbs by the blazing logs,
Chafed his pu :kered and bloodless skin.
And strived to quiet his chattering chin;
But, ebbing with unreturnng tide.
He kept on murmurng till he died,
Ave Maria!
idiot, souless brute from birth,
He could not be buried in sacred earth;
So they laid him afar, apart, Alone
Without a cross, or turf, or stone,
Sknseless clay unto senseless clay,
To which none ever came nigh to say,
Ave Maria!
When the meads grew saffron, the hawthorns
white.
And the lark bore his music out OF sight,
And the swallow OUTRAGED the racing wave,
Up from the lonely outcast grave
Sprouted lily, straight and high,
Such as she bears to whom men cry
Ave Maria
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 snow white diadem-
One pure lily, round which. behold!
Was written by God in veins OF gold,
"Ave Maria !"
Over the lily they built 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 idiots name,
Ave Maria!
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,