Woman gathering flowers, first century CE. Detached fresco, 38 × 32 cm, from the Villa Arianna in Stabiae, Campania, Italy, now in the Collection of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples, Italy. The woman may be Primavera (a personification of spring) or Flora (the Roman goddess of flowers, fertility, and abundance), or simply a generic maiden at leisure.
Spring bursts today, For Christ is risen and all the earth’s at play.
Flash forth, thou Sun, The rain is over and gone, its work is done.
Winter is past, Sweet Spring is come at last, is come at last.
Bud, Fig and Vine, Bud, Olive, fat with fruit and oil and wine.
Break forth this morn In roses, thou but yesterday a Thorn.
Uplift thy head, O pure white Lily through the Winter dead.
Beside your dams Leap and rejoice, you merry-making Lambs.
All Herds and Flocks Rejoice, all Beasts of thickets and of rocks.
Sing, Creatures, sing, Angels and Men and Birds and everything.
All notes of Doves Fill all our world: this is the time of loves.
This poem was originally published in A Pageant, and Other Poems(London, 1881) and is in the public domain.
One of the most celebrated poets of the Victorian era, Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894) was an English writer of Romantic, devotional, and children’s poems. She was the youngest of four siblings, among them the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, several of whose paintings she sat for, famously modeling for the Virgin Mary. A devout Anglican whose verse gives vivid expression to the life of faith and to spiritual longing, she is recognized as a saint by the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, who celebrate April 27 as her feast day.
This book is the first time Hildegard’s writings appeared in English. In selecting, translating, and adapting the material for it, Uhlein worked from the German critical editions of De Operatione Dei (1965), Liber Vitae Meritorum (1972), and Hildegard’s letters (Briefweschel) (1965) and songs (Lieder) (1969), all published by Otto Müller Verlag in Salzburg.
For the original Latin of the above hymn and a more straightforward translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell, see here. This link also includes a musical performance of the Latin (Hildegard wrote her own lyrics and music!).
Hildegard of Bingen, OSB, (ca. 1098–1179) was a German Benedictine abbess, theologian, preacher, poet, composer, playwright, and medical writer and practitioner. She founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg and Eibingen and was named a “doctor of the church” by Pope Benedict XVI in recognition of “her holiness of life and the originality of her teaching.” Hildegard’s most significant works are her three volumes of visionary theology: Scivias (Know the Ways) (for which she also supervised miniature illuminations), Liber Vitae Meritorum (Book of Life’s Merits), and Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works). But she is also well known for her liturgical hymns and antiphons, as well as the many letters she wrote to popes, emperors, abbots, abbesses, fellow mystics, and layfolk, dispensing wisdom and advice.
Gabriele Uhlein, OSF, (born 1952) is a retreat guide, workshop leader, and artist dedicated to the recovery of the Christian mystical tradition and the honoring of intuition and creativity in spiritual deepening. Born in Klingenberg, Germany, she emigrated to the US at age two. She has a PhD in process theology and Jungian-oriented psychology from Chicago Theological Seminary and is a member of the core staff at the Christine Center, a natural sanctuary in Willard, Wisconsin, rooted in the Franciscan principles of contemplation, hospitality, compassion, simplicity, transformation, and care for the earth.
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Art & Theology 