Irish Jesuit Province

Soliloquy of Fra AngelicoAuthor(s): David BearneSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 23, No. 268 (Oct., 1895), p. 515Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20498868 .

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SOLILOQUY OF FRA ANGEIJICO.

FROM prayer in choir I come to prayer in cell: Or at the midnight deep yon mighty hell

Wakes from the death of sleep to life of praise, Bidding the soul eke with the body raise Itself to heaven; or on the farthest hill The sweet lights break o'er forest, vale, and rill, And dawn's soft shining doth the day declare, Prayer is my life, and all my life is praver.

Or at the sacring of that Holy Rite When He the great Redeemer infinite, The hidden God, upon His altar lies In strange, mysterious, and secret guise; Or at the easel in the noontide light, His sacred Passion tremblingly I dight, And trace the furrows of His features fair, Prayer is my life, and all my life is prayer.

When reddening roses and fair lilies frail My senses with their soothing sweetness hail, And all the glory of a thousand flowers Unfold their petals through the summer hours, While to the birds' clear singing all the day Glad water-music falling fountains play, Sighing, I turn me to the cloister stair; Prayer is my life, and all my life is prayer.

Pacing the terrace of this garden old When snowy wrappings all its breadth enfold,

Shrouding in shining, spotless purity The whilom beauties that entranced me, Visions of angel-life possess my soul, And all the whiteness of that virgin-stole

Which my Beloved hath in keeping there; Prayer is my life, and all my life is prayer.

O happy hush that sacred silence keeps When bells are mute and the great organ sleeps ! Clothed in contemplation in my cell, Nor man nor angel may the rapture tell, The commune high with Heaven's Holy Three, The glorious Trinity in unity! O state ineffable, beyond compare,

Whose prayer is life, and whose whole life is prayer!

DAvw BEAnR, 9.3.

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