Eliza Allen Starr

Eliza Allen Starr Poems

Eliza Allen Starr Biography

Eliza Allen Starr (August 29, 1824—September 8, 1901) was an American artist, art critic, teacher, and lecturer. She was known throughout the United States and Europe for her books about Catholic art. Born in Massachusetts, Starr moved to Chicago in 1856, where she taught art and began to lecture throughout the city and around the United States. A convert from Unitarianism to Catholicism, in 1885 she became the first woman to be awarded the Laetare Medal, the most prestigious honour given to American Catholics. Pope Leo XIII sent her a medallion after she wrote The Three Archangels and the Guardian Angels in Art. Starr was also awarded a medal for her work as an art educator, based on displays of her students' work at the World's Columbian Exposition. She was the aunt of and a large influence on Ellen Gates Starr.)

The Best Poem Of Eliza Allen Starr

Mere de Douleur

October 9th 1858. SPRING PARK.

Neath a picture of the blessed
Ever Virgin Mother, dear,
With its cheek of patient sorrow
Wetted with one holy tear,

Sits my own beloved mother,
In the meekness of her age,
With a ripening patience turning
Life's late, autumn-tinted page-

Sits beneath its sacred shadow
As beneath a lovely vine,
On whose fair, benignant branches,
Sweetest-smelling clusters shine.

Placidly across her features
Strays a meditative smile,
Lighting up their tender pallor
With a gleam of heaven; the while

Her soft lips in mildest silence
Close upon a lovely thought,
By the Virgin's mournful aspect
To her inmost feeling brought.

O my mother dear, as gentle
As the south winds, breathing now
O'er our richly flushing forests
And thy softly furrowed brow,

Never may thy chastened spirit,
'Neath a darker shadow pine,
Than beneath these pictured dolours
Of this Mother, most benign.

Never may more bitter juices
Wet those patient lips of thine,
Than the juices of the clusters
Purpling o'er this virgin vine.

And, O mother, meek in wisdom,
May thy soul, in faith, repose
Under its celestial shadow,
When thy dying eyelids close

On the flitting shades and sunshine
Of thy swiftly fleeting race:
Jesus! Mary! Joseph! aid her!
Shield her in your loved embrace!

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