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A Heroic Crown of Sonnets
in Honor of the Ever Virgin

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—1st Mystery: The Prophecy of Isaiah

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The Timeless Song

The timeless song of her virginity,
Intoned by holy angels, signifies
The consecration to the Trinity
Of her who godly grandeur glorifies.

As font of Christian being she was formed,
As sheer immaculacy was designed,
To be to heaven’s harmony conformed,
A flawless form in God’s eternal mind.

What music does the prophet’s ear perceive?
Mark well these words on which all hearts should dwell:
Behold, a holy Virgin shall conceive
A Son whose name shall be Emmanuel.

This finely measured verse which God creates
Throughout all time Isaiah intonates.

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The Echo Ever After

Throughout all time Isaiah intonates,
Of God’s belovèd Son, the virgin birth;
The echo of his voice reverberates
For all, across the ages of the earth.

Just as the ancient prophecies foretell
The Son of God she will in time conceive,
So do they dimly intimate as well
How she our souls’ conception will achieve.

She kneads the substance of our souls unborn,
Her likeness gently does on them impress,
Until immortally our souls are born
Unto a love that will not evanesce.

Through Mary’s virginal maternity
True Love descends from all eternity.

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—2nd Mystery: The Virginal Conception

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The Divine Embrace

True Love descends from all eternity
To Mary who most willingly had vowed,
Inspired by her surpassing sanctity,
To be espoused to God, thus she avowed.
Her vow of virginal integrity
Had flowered forth from her initial grace,
Now blooms as she accepts wholeheartedly
To mother Christ and all the human race.

The Angel Gabriel proclaims: Behold,
The Holy Spirit shall envelop thee,
The Father’s might thy being shall enfold,
So thou in his divine embrace shalt be.

In our salvation she participates;
In time in her pure womb God incarnates.

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The Bridal Chamber

In time in her pure womb God incarnates,
As Providence predestined her to be
The Savior’s Mother who cooperates
In his redemption of humanity.

A Virgin she remains, for with her vow
Her Motherhood bonds indissolubly,
As godly virtue does her soul endow
With this twin privilege ineffably.

This twofold grace with spousal love unites:
Her womb, as nuptial room, is beautified
By God, whose love the Virgin Bride requites,
So that her Bridegroom may therein abide.

His human form the Virgin Bride will knead
Within her matrix whence he will proceed.

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—3rd Mystery: The Virgin Birth

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The Glowing Hearth

Within her matrix whence he will proceed,
His Heart is warmed as in a glowing hearth;
And so he wills no labor pangs precede
The miracle of his true virgin birth.

Angelic strains of solemn hymnal glee
Suggest the wondrous way he will come forth:
The Holy One, once born in time of thee,
Shall be declared the Son of God thenceforth.

As Christ revealed her as inviolate
Upon his birth, so likewise he preserved
Her strength so that she could compassionate
Beneath the Cross, invincibly conserved.

Preserving her intact with reverence,
The Son confirms her lofty eminence.

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The Refining Fire

The Son confirms her lofty eminence
As virgin whose pure heart will incandesce
A glowing golden warmth that we may sense
If we her purity of faith profess.

The Passion will reveal, through her firm stand,
Imperishable purity: like gold
In a refining fire, she will withstand
The trial and, for our sake, all faith uphold.

The Cross, so like an all-consuming flame
Devoured the disciples who forsook
Their Lord, while Mary, her whole Heart aflame,
In purest sacrificial love partook.

Her Heart, in unison with his, will bleed;
His will is that, through her, we may be freed.

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—4th Mystery: Virginity After Birth

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The Ark Asperged with Precious Blood

His will is that, through her, we may be freed,
And thus no ephemeral vow she made,
To be but one with Christ, so she may plead
To save all souls who far from God have strayed.
Her vow as Virgin ever after birth
Is wedded to her coredemptive pain
As spouse whose sorrow has salvific worth,
Whose sacrifice all graces will obtain.

Her womb, the ark of our salvation, would,
As holiest of holies, one day be
Asperged with blood cascading from the wood,
Returning to its source devotedly.

God wills her vow to serve his providence
Through grace she will perpetually dispense.

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“wood”: the wood of the Cross.

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The Womb Awash in Scarlet

Through grace she will perpetually dispense,
Her Bridegroom his salvation to us grants;
That we may know eternal innocence,
I know not man her voice forever chants.

The Virgin bearing Purity presents
Him in the Temple as the Father willed;
To join in his oblation she consents:
Through martyrdom her vow will be fulfilled.

Her womb, with precious blood the Lamb will shed,
Will be awash, with scarlet overrun,
The place of virgin nuptials bathed in red:
In her the Spouse and Martyr are but one.

His martyrdom her womb will thus enshrine,
Her virgin love with sacrifice entwine.

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—5th Mystery: The Holy Faith in the Perpetual Virginity

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From Virgin Womb to Virgin Tomb

Her virgin love with sacrifice entwine
From when within her chaste maternal womb
Her Jesus dwells as in a sacred shrine,
Till he reposes in the maiden tomb.

No pangs of labor did she undergo
In childbirth, nor hard labor to entomb
Her lifeless Son, although her heart with woe
In the sepulcher does her flesh inhume.

See how she swathes his body in the bands;
This shroud recalls to her the swaddling clothes
Enveloping her Child; admire her priestly hands
With gravity his shrouded corpse depose.

She is forever wedded to his plight
From cradle to the cross without respite.

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From Blissful Tears to Bitter Tears

From cradle to the cross without respite
She mothers God, then man with no relief,
To heal his soul of his soul’s sinful blight;
And yet the birth was joy, no pain or grief.

From bliss to bitterness the tears she wept
Were turned, to birth our souls to dignity;
Between these births all is unlike except
For her perpetual virginity.

Within our holy Nicene Creed a most
Firm witness to this beauteous truth is borne:
By the great power of the Holy Ghost
Of Ever-Virgin Mary he was born.

In her sheer gift of self to Love divine,
From first to last her Heart and his align.

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—6th Mystery: The Ever Virgin in the Holy Liturgy

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The Blazing Bush

From first to last her Heart and his align
To offer up the blood which we revere,
According to the ancient tridentine
Tradition, on the first day of the year.

We feast the day thy Child was circumcised,
While thy unvanquished virtue through a veil
We contemplate with Moses, quite surprised
To see the flames that burn to no avail.

Just as we honor the first drop he bled
When hardly had Our Savior flesh assumed,
So we extoll her Virgin Heart, a red
Hot blazing bush that never is consumed.

Her Heart aflame with Love burns ever bright;
To be but one with him is her delight.

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“tridentine tradition”: the ancient Roman rite, that is, the traditional Latin Mass as it has existed for over a millennium and as codified by the Council of Trent (1545-1563). This stanza refers to the Feast Day celebrated on the first day of the year, on the 1st of January, according to the liturgical calendar of this venerable liturgical rite (and which differs from the new rite currently observed by the Catholic Church), and which is the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus, celebrating the moment when, as an infant, he shed the very first drop of his Precious Blood.

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The Immaculate Blood

To be but one with him is her delight,
Beneath the wound whence flows the precious blood,
Cascading river of his grace: despite
The pain, with joy her heart is all aflood.

For her, the river flows from Jesus’ side
And fills this august vessel to the brim
With water, for the bitter tears she cried,
With blood, for her own blood she gave to him.

His blood, of everlasting life the gage,
Received by souls exempt from mortal stain,
Whose thirst this nectar can but assuage,
Is hers: all sullied souls should thus abstain.

To keep for us his blood forever warm,
Her soul consents to being cruciform.

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—7th Mystery: The Virgin Form of Christian Souls

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The Virgin Made Church

Her soul consents to being cruciform
So she may model us like pliant clay,
Unto her image our own hearts conform
Until we reach the everlasting day.

Saint Francis’s salutation chimes afar
Like ringing bells: Hail Lady, Holy Queen,
All Holy Mother of our God: you are
The virgin rendered Church, by God foreseen.

Through her, the one true Holy Church is rich
In virgin love of Christ, unshared and whole,
So that she may with grace the world enrich
By motherly begetting every soul.

In Mary’s womb does Christ his Church preform,
To shape our souls into her virgin form.

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The Maternal Form

To shape our souls into her virgin form,
To her maternal Heart she draws us in,
Wherein she renders our hearts uniform,
To her own likeness ever more akin.

Upon the Church, her eyes with mercy look;
Her splendid incandescence still illumes
The present gloom; we never are forsook
So long as her pure gaze our own subsumes.

Each of our hearts surrenders like a child
So she may in her virgin womb enfold
Our difform souls, within this matrix mild
Her mother’s love may each of us remold.

Our souls may thus sing with affinity
The timeless song of her virginity.

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—The Master Sonnet

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The Ever-Virgin Coredemptress

The timeless song of her virginity
Throughout all time Isaiah intonates:
True Love descends from all eternity,
In time in her pure womb God incarnates.

Within her matrix whence he will proceed,
The Son confirms her lofty eminence;
His will is that, through her, we may be freed
Through grace she will perpetually dispense.

Her virgin love with sacrifice entwine
From cradle to the cross without respite;
From first to last her Heart and his align:
To be but one with him is her delight.

Her soul consents to being cruciform
To shape our souls into her virgin form.

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Poet’s Note

This Heroic Crown in honor of the Ever Virgin is dedicated to Father Serafino M. Lanzetta, Marian Franciscan, with gratitude for his luminous reflections on the Semper Virgo. These sonnets were inspired by the Chaplet of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity, conceived by Father Lanzetta, which received the imprimatur of Stephen Robson, Bishop of Dunkeld. This newly devised chaplet honors the seven moments of Our Lady’s Perpetual Virginity. It can be found in the book Semper Virgo: Mary’s Virginity as the “Form” of Christian Life, Arouca Press, 2023. Anyone wishing to understand the theology undergirding these poetic meditations can be enlightened by reading this profoundly beautiful theological book.

This series of fifteen sonnets comprises what is known as a sonnet redoublé or heroic crown, which is a complex form of crown of sonnets. A crown of sonnets is a sequence of sonnets concerned with a single theme, one aspect of the theme being delved into by each of the sonnets. Each succeeding sonnet is linked to the preceding sonnet by repeating the final line of the preceding sonnet as its first line. The first line of the first sonnet is repeated as the final line of the final sonnet, thereby bringing the sequence to a close, and linking all the sonnets together as in one complete crown. The advanced form of crown of sonnets, called a heroic crown, was conceived by the Siena Academy, which was formed in 1460, and to which the author of this verse wishes to pay homage. A heroic crown is comprised of fifteen sonnets, which are linked as described above, but in addition, the final binding sonnet is made up of all the first lines (or all the last lines) of the preceding fourteen, in order. This fifteenth sonnet, called the master sonnet, brings together all the sonnets as a final bouquet, showing clearly the indissoluble bond between them, according to both form and meaning.

The heroic crown is a very demanding form with many formal constraints due to the intertwining of all the sonnets through the recurrence of the same lines from one sonnet to another, as well as through the complex rhyme scheme, which includes seven principal rhymes which echo throughout the whole composition. The composing of a heroic crown demands much forethought and is akin to the forming of the design scheme for all the stained-glass windows in a Gothic cathedral, conceived theologically and aesthetically as a well-ordered whole, as a microcosm representing on a smaller scale the macrocosm, prior to the craftsmen actually fabricating the stained-glass images.

The nature of the sonnet is such that the meaning must be expressed concisely. The sonnet form combines a density of matter (i.e. of meaningful language), along with a brevity of form (i.e. of musical composition). Though each sonnet concerns one particular mystery, each one is linked not only in a formal sense, through the repetition of the same line of verse and the recurrence of rhymes throughout all the sonnets, but also according to the meaning of the mysteries which, while distinct, are intrinsically linked.

The complexity of the rhyme scheme is not merely a kind of formal tour de force, for the reason that form and meaning are united, in that the form echoes the meaning and the meaning is enhanced by the form. The intrinsic bond between all the moments of Our Lady’s Perpetual Virginity is echoed by the regular recurrence of rhyming words. In addition to each single sonnet following the traditional Shakespearean rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG, so as to form a whole in itself, there is an intricate interweaving of rhymes throughout the whole series of sonnets, linking them all together as a whole. Each sonnet deals with a particular mystery, or a particular aspect of a mystery, but all the sonnets are woven together as one single tapestry representing the mystery of the Ever Virgin. The rhyme scheme forms a beautifully woven fabric with a regularly repeated motif, so that this formal element of poetry echoes the meaning expressed by the words. The rhyme scheme echoes the harmony between form and meaning, or to put it another way, through the interweaving of rhymes, form and meaning embrace one another.

The sense is further echoed through the regular, metrical rhythm, through the musical form through which the thought is expressed, as such is precisely the essence of poetry. It is therefore essential that the sonnets be read rhythmically, by marking the iambic “heartbeat” rhythm. In this way, the regular heartbeat rhythm of the iambs can be heard: ta-TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM. For each sonnet is indeed written in iambic pentameter, that is to say, with 5 feet per line, each foot comprised of an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable. This rhythm, which is the most common in English verse as it is the most natural to the English language, is said to resemble the beating of the human heart. When the verse is recited aloud, as well as when read silently to oneself, this rhythm should be marked, should be audible, in such a way that one should be able to hear the beating of the Immaculate Heart of the Ever Virgin.

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Karen Darantière is an American living in France who teaches English language and literature at a French high school in Paris.

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