Ave Maria, blessed maid

Author: John Keble

Keble, John, M.A., was born at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, on St. Mark's Day, 1792. His father was Vicar of Coln St. Aldwin's, about three miles distant, but lived at Fairford in a house of his own, where he educated entirely his two sons, John and Thomas, up to the time of their entrance at Oxford. In 1806 John Keble won a Scholarship at Corpus Christi College, and in 1810 a Double First Class, a distinction which up to that time had been gained by no one except Sir Robert Peel. In 1811 he was elected a Fellow of Oriel, a very great honour, especially for a boy under 19 years of age; and in 1811 he won the University Prizes both for the English and Latin Essays. It is somewhat remarkable that amid this brilliantly successful career,… Go to person page >

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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	Ave Maria, blessed maid
Author:	John Keble (1827)
Place of Origin:	Great Britain
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Ave Maria, blessed Maid. J. Keble. [Blessed Virgin Mary.] From his Poem for "The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary," stanzas 7-10. The original poem was written on the death of his mother, June 1, 1823. This fact supplies the key to the line of thought in the opening stanza:—

"Oh! Thou Who deign'st to sympathize
With all our frail and fleshly ties,
Maker, yet Brother dear.
Forgive the too presumptuous thought,
If, calming wayward grief, I sought
To gaze on Thee too near."

The poem as originally written was too personal for publication in the Christian Year, and, in 1826 (dated Mar. 9, 1826), the four concluding stanzas were omitted, and those beginning in that work, "Ave Maria, blessed Maid," to the end, were substituted, and the poem in this its new form was first published therein in 1827. The original was included with a special note in his Miscellaneous Poems, 1869, pp. 230-33, and the cento, as a hymn, in the Appendix to the Hymnal Noted, 2nd ed., 1864, the People's Hymnal, 1867, No. 192, and others.

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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