triplum: Hail Virgin, greeted by the angel’s message,
soon pregnant yet free of all sin:
in you Deity is made human by heavenly inspiration,
Virgin undiminished by act or thought.
And if you tremble at the miracle while the child develops,
how much warier are you when it comes to be born.
While you remain a Virgin, the mind offers these words,
and saying ‘Be not afraid’, charms and eases you.
You do not contest it when he says you will bear a child,
however much you wonder and are troubled.
You are proclaimed not to have known a man, but to be ever pure,
and, a thing to wonder at, surely, to have changed nature.
The angel: ‘You shall conceive the heavenly God
from the realms on high, and bear a child of earth.
There is no fault in you, as your son is witness.
You shall torment Leviathan, and he will plague you.’
duplum:
Rejoice, unique Virgin, mother of our saviour,
root of the people’s life, seed of the new flower.
He drew from you, you then bear, the flask of nectar,
by your virtue you hold the sea’s waters in a drop of dew.
Say by what word you conceived! You heard ‘The Lord
is with you’ and answered the angelic countenance ‘I am yours’.
You contained his presence, then his nature;
you found the Messiah in your own nature.
O heavenly harmony in this joining,
flesh of our person united with wisdom:
how and by what path you are so zealous,
these things only the pious mother knew, and you, good Jesus.
Mother and heir of God, redeemer of the world,
recall me faithfully in my last hours,
let my acts not constrain me with them in their hours,
as you show me to the face of my maker.
contratenor:
You are proved the Virgin mother: the birth shows the mother
the seal of your Virginal womb judges you untouched.
When your divine child blesses you as Virgin,
then heaven, earth, and ocean waves preach your praises.
This birthing is no penance, it gladdens the mother.
Christ is made our brother, as his example teaches.
tenor:
Hail, jewel of the lights of heaven.
Hail, sacred place of the Holy Spirit.
The Lily & the Rose
