Back again!  

Posted by Agnes Regina

"Well, I'm back," as Sam said at the end of the Lord of the Rings. In the past couple of months we've been nomads, staying for a while with cousins and, in my case, visiting a friend of the family in New York for two weeks. Now I am back at college, comfortably settled in my new apartment with the Devil's Advocate, and classes are already started and going quite well; and the family is preparing to make the final move.

During my visit to New York I was told to look out for the statue of Atlas at the Rockefeller Center, bowing before the Blessed Sacrament he faces through the doors of St. Patrick's Cathedral. I went, therefore, and admired both church and statue; and a while later this sonnet began to take shape, though it has undergone many revisions since.

Atlas

I walked on broad Fifth Avenue one day
And saw a towering form, a Titan tall,
Holding on high the heavens' heavy ball -
Of strength unequaled such a grand display,
I stood and stared. His bending knee I saw -
Bent, though, in reverence, rather than a fall;
What reverence moved this mightiest man of all,
Bearing the heavens, thus to bow in awe?

Across the avenue I traced his gaze,
Past two proud portals, down high halls of stone
By incense dimmed, aglow with candles' rays,
And in the monstrance bright, a sun ablaze -
The One whom Atlas humbly knelt to own,
And whom all creatures even so must praise!