Catholic Poetry

TO ASK OUR LADY’S PATRONAGE FOR A BOOK ON COLUMBUS: A FRAGMENT
By Thomas D’Arcy McGee

Star of the sea, wo thom , age after age,
The maiden kneels whose lover sails the sea;
Star, that the drowining death-pang can assuage,
And shape the soul’s course to eternity;
Mother of God, to Egypt’s realm exiled,
Mother of God, in Bethlehem’s crib confined,
Thee do I ask to aid my anxious mind,
And make this book find favour with thy Child.

Of one who lived and laboured in they ray,
I would rehearse the striving and success;
Through the dense past I shall never find my way,
Unless thou helpest, bold Comfortress;
A world of doubt and darkness to evdde;
An ocean all unknown to Christian kind;
Another world by nature’s self arrayed,
O’er the wide waste of waves, I seek to find.