'Mary Walked through a Wood of Thorn'

J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton, and "Love and other Mysteries"

Hello, Poetry Friend

After many decades and a few significant movies, I am rereading the LOTR series. Andy Serkis is my audio guide, and thank you, sir, for singing.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, chapter 3, “Three Is Company,” Frodo and Sam and Pippin hear an elf song as they walk at night through the wood.

Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear! 
O Queen beyond the Western Seas! 
A light to us that wander here 
Amid the world of woven trees.

–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

That’s the most Marian quatrain I’ve ever read. And Tolkien was Catholic and a daily Mass-goer, so I’m not wrong to read it that way. It took me a long, long time to love Mary. Like a star, her light took a long time to reach me.

The same idea of Mary in a dark wood appears in G.K. Chesterton’s “The Ballad of the White Horse.” King Alfred and his men see the Virgin Mary, her heart pierced with seven swords.

Over the iron forest
He saw Our Lady stand,
Her eyes were sad withouten art,
And seven swords were in her heart—
But one was in her hand.

–G.K. Chesterton, “The Ballad of the White Horse”

This idea of walking in a dark wood and the Virgin Mary appearing is even older than these two examples. It’s the subject of an old German hymn, translated as “Mary Walked Through a Wood of Thorn.” I fell in love with this arrangement (which Callie Feyen sent me) and then wrote a poem about a long, thorny walk — along which we are not alone.

The poem is part of my new collection from Wipf and Stock, Love & other Mysteries.