IV
Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
Pray for all those who are in ships, those
Whose business has to do with fish, and
Those concerned with every lawful traffic
And those who conduct them.
Repeat a prayer also on behalf of
Women who have seen their sons or husbands
Setting forth, and not returning:
Figlia del tuo figlio,
Queen of Heaven.
Also pray for those who were in ships, and
Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea’s lips
Or in the dark throat which will not reject them
Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell’s
Perpetual angelus.
When I began to consider writing a book about prayer poems, T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets were among the first that came to mind. Lyrical, mystical, and richly, deeply poetic, these poems, which Eliot wrote in London during a terrifying war with Germany—have inspired admiration and gratitude in generations of readers who have placed them among the great landmarks of Christian poetry and found in them a hospitable place for theological reflection and an invitation and incitement to prayer. They are, I believe, a record of a soul’s journey and the fruit of extended meditation on the ways that divine Love infuses time, history, and the circumstances of a single human life. But, except for this short canto from The Dry Salvages, the third of the four poems that make up the Quartets, they are written not as prayer but rather as interior reflection in which the speaker is in a contemplative state.
This canto, though, a prayer addressed to Mary as Queen of Heaven, has a distinct Anglo-Catholic liturgical character. Like many of the prayers for particular people, groups, or occasions in the Book of Common Prayer, it focuses specifically but inclusively on “all” who are concerned with life on water—those who support them, those who await them at home, those who have died at sea.
The prayer, the fourth of five cantos, introduces a distinct change in rhythm and tone from the previous three, which represent a musing dramatic monologue—philosophical, speculative, thoughtful—uttered in the voice of a speaker who wonders and seeks and occasionally prophesies. Here, the speaker prays directly to the Queen of Heaven, asking for her intercession on behalf of all seafarers and those who await them. In the wide context of all the quartets, this brief prayer of petition stands out as a humble return to the forms prescribed by the church—received rather than invented, simply recited rather than elaborated. But it also assumes a metaphorical dimension: all of us are voyagers, faring forward, awaited or awaiting, facing down danger or loss.
And all of us are involved in the lives of those fellow voyagers for whom we pray. Brief as it is, this is an encompassing prayer: “all those” for whom the speaker prays include whole classes of people for whom, as the old Book of Common Prayer says, it is our “bounden duty” to pray. We inherit forms like this one that teach us and keep us from mere self-interest or tribal loyalties. We are instructed to pray for “all in authority,” “all those” who confess God’s name, “all those who are in any way afflicted or distressed, in mind, body, or estate.” These prayers are not simply sweeping abstractions that “cover the bases” and dispense with that bounden duty in one fell swoop, but strong verbal acts of solidarity—sometimes including people for whom we’d much rather not pray. We’re all in it together. We are, as Paul put it, members of each other, and members also of distinct communities, professional guilds, circles of people bound by common circumstance. We are bound by common needs and linked by ties that bind.
That Mary is the one to whom the prayer is addressed links this prayer with those of Dante—a literary and spiritual ancestor to whom Eliot made frequent reference throughout his long career. But, more importantly, it links us to Mary, a humble and astonished human being who was chosen for a momentous, daunting mission, and, young and poor as she was, said yes. Protestants like those I grew up with have a strong resistance to the Catholic practice of praying to Mary or any other intercessor but Christ, but I have come to appreciate the value of addressing the wide communion of saints (among whom she does occupy a unique place) as brothers and sisters, gone before us on this journey, and available to intercede from that wide and mysterious realm where we hope one day to join them.
The Latin title for Mary that the poet includes here, “Figlia del tuo figlio,” “Daughter of your son,” points to the great paradox of the Incarnation—that the Creator of the Universe came to us vulnerable and small, committed to the protection of a human being, and comes to us still in the poor and vulnerable, almighty and too often unnoticed.