Going to Mass Last Steady
Going to Mass Last Steady
(Tune: The Lowlands of Holland) GOING to Mass last Sunday my true love passed me by,I knew her mind was altered by the rolling of her eye;And when I stood in God’s dark light my tongue could word no prayerKnowing my saint had fled and left her reliquary bare. Sweet faces smiled from holy glass, demure in saintly love,Sweet voices ripe with Latin grace rolled from the choir above;But brown eyes under Sunday wear were all my liturgy;How can she hope for heaven who has so deluded me ? When daffodils were altar gold her lips were light on mineAnd when the hawthorn blame was bright we drank the year’s new wine;The nights seemed stained-glass windows lit with love that paled the sky,But love’s last ember perishes in the winter of her eye. Drape every downcast day now in purple cloth of Lent,Smudge every forehead now with ash, that she may yet repent,Who going to Mass last Sunday could pass so proudly byAnd show her mind was altered by the rolling of an eye.
