The Virgin
The Virgin - form Summary
A Devotional Sonnet Form
This poem is a sonnet from Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets that uses the sonnet's tight structure to present a devotional portrait of the Virgin Mary. Within compact fourteen lines, elevated imagery and contrasts—motherhood and maiden purity, celestial and terrene—are compressed into a single devotional argument. The sonnet form channels praise into a concentrated culminating thought, asking readers to view Mary as a reconciliatory, intercessory figure embodying humanity's ideal virtues.
Read Complete AnalysesMother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost With the least shade of thought to sin allied. Woman! above all women glorified, Our tainted nature's solitary boast; Purer than foam on central ocean tost; Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast; Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween, Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend, As to a visible Power, in which did blend All that was mixed and reconciled in thee Of mother's love with maiden purity, Of high with low, celestial with terrene!
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