TO ASK OUR LADY’S PATRONAGE FOR A BOOK ON COLUMBUS: A FRAGMENT

Star of the Sea, to whom, age after age, The maiden kneels whose lover sails the sea; Star, that the drowning 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 thy ray, I would rehearse the striving and success; Through the dense past I ne’er shall find my way, Unless thou helpest, hold Comfortress; A world of doubt and darkness to evade; 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.