Dear Friends,
Salve Regina
Words attributed to Hermann von Reichenau (1013 — 1054); Music: traditional Gregorian chant, Tonus Simplex
Sung by Ishmael Wallace
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,
Hail our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry,
Poor banished children of Eve;
To thee do we send up our sighs,
Mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.
Turn then, most gracious advocate,
Thine eyes of mercy toward us;
And after this our exile,
Show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving,
O sweet Virgin Mary.
Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiæ,
vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve
Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevæ
Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes
in hac lacrimarum valle.
Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos
misericordes oculos ad nos converte;
Et Iesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,
nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.
O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.
Banished from the Garden through the fault of our first mother, Eve, we send up our sighs to the Mother of Mercy, the New Eve, in whom this fault is made right. The life we live is not our own; we are not our own mother. It is the life of the Old Eve or the New. Between these mountain peaks, in this valley of tears, is the stage where our drama is acted out.
The two Eves are two ways of knowing: one reaches out to grasp reality — a piece thereof; the other rests in its palm.
As a boy, learning Harmony, I was like the First Eve. I took hold of the chords with joy, seeing I could use them to move my listeners:
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
(Book of Genesis 3:6, King James Version)
I appreciate its power more than ever, but now Harmony is less a tool to use than a Word to which I must hearken, as the New Eve hearkened to the Angel:
And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.
(Gospel of Luke 1:38, King James Version)
An artist must be still and wait for the great wings to descend.
We are tempted instead to reach out for a formula, as the First Eve reached for the apple. Ezra Pound describes this temptation in his poem “The Lake Isle”:
O GOD, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,
With the little bright boxes
piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragrant cavendish
and the shag,
And the bright Virginia
loose under the bright glass cases,
And a pair of scales
not too greasy,
And the volailles dropping in for a word or two in passing,
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.
O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
or install me in any profession
Save this damn’d profession of writing,
where one needs one’s brains all the time.
One may become a tobacconist and still appear a writer; one continues to write, but no longer listens to the Angel, one’s soul trapped in a little bright box.
It is natural to want little bright boxes. But our destiny is to move beyond the natural — to move from the Old Eve to the New.
Thank you so much.
With every good wish,
Ishmael
The Annunciation Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, 1833 — 1898
Thank you so much. I’m so glad you found this message in a bottle!
This is simply beautiful. Thank you. What a way to start my Thursday morning. Bless you.