For the Hillmother (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Montague
- First Published: 1975
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Sex or sexuality, Nature, Christianity, Bible, biblical imagery, or biblical symbolism, Catholics or Catholic Church, Fertility, Anatomy, Human anatomy, Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint
The Poem
“For the Hillmother” is a thirty-two-line invocation of nature and paean to fertile sexuality consisting of sixteen pairs of short lines. The first line in each pair calls upon an aspect of nature, and the second asks it to perform a particular beneficent action. The poem is a secular version of a litany, a traditional form of group prayer in which a leader and a congregation recite alternating lines. Standing immediately behind this poem is the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, sometimes called the Litany of Loreto, a prayer in use in the Roman Catholic church...
[The entire page is 1430 words long]
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