The world shines bright for inexperienced eyes,
And death seems distant to the gay and strong,
And in the youthful heart proud fancies throng,
And only present good can nature prize.
How then shall youth o’er these low vapours rise,
And climb the upward path so steep and long?
And how, amid earth’s sights and sounds of wrong,
Walk with pure heart and face raised to the skies?

By gazing on the Infinitely Good,
Whose love must quell, or hallow every other—
By living in the shadow of the Rood,
For He that hangs there is our Elder Brother,
Who dying gave to us Himself as food,
And His own Mother as our nursing Mother.

*In the last of his “Discourses to Mixed Congregations,” Dr. Newman calls the Blesed Virgin the Mother of Emanuel, and says: “It is the boast of the Catholic religion that it has the gift of making the young heart chaste; and why is this, but that it gives us Jesus for our food and Mary for our nursing Mother?”