La Liberté guidant le peuple (2)

The Blessed Virgin

Compared to the Air we Breathe

WILD air, world-mothering air,

Nestling me everywhere,

That each eyelash or hair

Girdles; goes home betwixt

The fleeciest, frailest-flixed

Snowflake; that ’s fairly mixed

With, riddles, and is rife

In every least thing’s life;

This needful, never spent,

And nursing element;

My more than meat and drink,

My meal at every wink;

This air, which, by life’s law,

My lung must draw and draw

Now but to breathe its praise,

Minds me in many ways

Of her who not only

Gave God’s infinity

Dwindled to infancy

Welcome in womb and breast,

Birth, milk, and all the rest

But mothers each new grace

That does now reach our race—

Mary Immaculate,

Merely a woman, yet

Whose presence, power is

Great as no goddess’s

Was deemèd, dreamèd ...

Gerard Manley Hopkins

1844-1889

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Tableau: Eugène Delacroix, Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, 1826, Oil on canvas, 147 x 209 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, France