h, the Sovereign of saints,
With pilgrim foot up tiring hills she trod,
And heavenly stile with handmaids' toil acquaints;
Her youth to age, her health to sick she lends;
Her heart to God, to neighbor hand she bends.

A Prince she is, and mightier Prince doth bear,
Yet pomp of princely train she would not have;
But doubtless, heavenly choirs attendant were,
Her Child from harm, herself from fall to save:
Word to the voice, song to the tune she brings,
The voice her word, the tune her ditty sings.

Eternal lights enclosed in her breast
Shot out such piercing beams of burning love,
That when her voice her cousin's ears possessed
The force thereof did force her babe to move:
With secret signs the children greet each other;
But, open praise each leaveth to his mother.

Robert Southwell, S.J. 1560-1595.

PART TWO

CHAPTER XXII

THE ASCENSION

And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted
from them, and carried up into heaven.

S. Luke XXIV, 51.

O Mother of God, since we have obtained confidence in thee,
we shall not be put to shame, but we shall be saved.

And since we have obtained thy help and thy meditation, O,
thou holy, pure, and perfect one!

We fear not but that we shall put our enemies to flight and
scatter them.

We have taken unto us the shelter of thy mighty help in all
things like a shield.

And we pray, and beseech thee that we may call upon thee, O
Mother of God, so that thou deliver us through thy prayers.

And that thou mayest raise us up again from the sleep of
darkness, to offer praise through the might of God Who took
flesh in thee.

COPTIC.

There would be no doubt of the finality of our Lord's physical
withdrawal this time. As the group of disciples stood on the hilltop in
Galilee and watched the clouds close about Him, they would feel that
this was the end of the kind of intercourse to which they had been
accustomed. The past Forty Days would have done much to prepare them for
the separation. Their conception of our Lord's work as issuing in the
establishment of an earthly Kingdom had been swept away; the changed
terms of their intercourse with Him in the resurrection state had
emphasised the change that had taken place; His teachi