Opening Passage: From The Mystery of the Holy Innocents:
I am, God says, Master of the Three Virtues.
Faith is a loyal wife.
Charity is a fervent mother.
But hope is a very little girl.I am, God says, the Master of the Virtues.
It is Faith who holds fast through century upon century.
It is Charity who gives herself through centuries of centuries,
But it is my little hope
who gets up every morning.I am, God says, the Lord of the Virtues.
It is Faith who resists through century upon century.
It is Charity who yields through century upon century.
But it is my little hope
Who every morning
Says good-day to us.I am, God says, the Lord of the Virtues. (p. 69)
Summary: Since this is a collection of poems, there is no plot or direct throughline, but there is a recurring theme of France as an expression of Catholic hope despite its mounting difficulties. We get this in "Presentation of the Beauce to Our Lady of Chartres" (of which you can hear Paul Mankin's interpretation of the French original here), in which the Beauce, the rich farmland region between the Seine and the Loire, is pictured as being engaged in a sort of quasi-liturgical procession, its harvests and beauty being offered as a gift to the Virgin:
We were born for you on the margin of this plain,
Where the golden River Loire serenely curves,
And this sandy glorious stream forever serves
To kiss the sacred hem of your immortal train. (p. 23)
Just as here you look down on an ocean of wheat,
Over there it's an ocean of heads you control,
And the harvests of joy and the harvests of dole
Are collected each night in the courts round your feet. (p. 25)
Different expressions of French hope even in difficulty are also found in "Prayer to Our Lady of Chartres For a Credit to be Carried Forward", "For Those who Die in Battle", and The Mystery of the Holy Innocents.
The Mystery of the Holy Innocents is the primary, and longest, poem in this collection, and it is on the Christian virtue of hope itself, rooted, of course, in the Passion of Christ and the martyrdom of the saints. One of the most striking passages in the poem pictures the prayers of Christians as ships in great fleets of ships sent to conquer God:
Those three or four words which conquer me, me the conquerable,
And which they send in front of their misery like two invincible hands joined together.
Those three or four words which advance like a strong prow in front a weak ship,
And which cleave the wave of my anger.
And when the prow has passed, the ship passes and all the fleet behind it. (p. 87)
There are four great fleets. The first is the fleet of the Paternosters, the Our Fathers,
And it is a fleet of the line
A battle fleet,
Like a beautiful classical fleet, like a fleet of triremes,
Advancing to attack the King (p. 90)
After it follows the second fleet, "the fleet with white sails, the innumerable fleet of the Ave Marias, / And it is a fleet of biremes" (p. 95). The third fleet is all the prayers of the Christian clock -- the Divine Office or Liturgy of Hours, the prayers of the Mass and Vespers, the graces before meals. These are the three fleets of prayers, containing all of the prayers of the Church. But there is, the poem goes on to say, a fourth fleet, "the invisible fleet" (p. p. 95), consisting of the prayers never said, the half-felt, half-understood impulses of the heart, completely imperceptible, but each one treated by God as if it were fully a prayer like any other.
The Mystery of the Holy Innocents also explores the ways in which France is the France of St. Louis, a saint of hope, in which the liberty of the Frenchman is an image of the liberty, the gratuitousness and grace, of God. In the same way, an extensive section of it reflects on the Old Testament as an anticipation of the New Testament, an anticipation that itself anticipates the martyrdom of the Holy Innocents, who themselves symbolize the virtue of hope. All of history up to them is but the childhood of a salvation history that ends in the hopeful innocence of a new childhood:
Nothing is less elaborate than my Paradise.
Aram sub ipsam, on the steps of the altar itself
These simple children play with their palms and their martyrs' crowns.
I believe they play at hoops, God says, and perhaps at quoits
(at least I believe so, for do not think
that they ever ask my permission)
And the palm forever green they use apparently as a hoop-stick. (p. 165)
Favorite Passage: From "For Those who Die in Battle" (from Eve):
Happy are they who die for a temporal land,
When a just war calls, and they obey and go forth,
Happy are they who die for a handful of earth,
Happy are they who die in so noble a band.Happy are they who die in their country's defence,
Lying outstretched before God with upturned faces.
Happy are they who die in those last high places,
Such funeral rites have a great magnificence.Happy are they who die for their cities of earth,
They are the outward forms of the City above.
Happy are they who die for their fire and their hearth,
Their father's house and its humble honour and love. (p. 58)
Recommendation: Highly Recommended.
*****
Charles Péguy, The Mystery of the Holy Innocents and Other Poems, Pansy Pakenham, tr., Wipf and Stock Publishers (Eugene, OR: 2017).
