Charles Walter Stansby Williams (September 20, 1886 – May 15, 1945) was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian and literary critic. Most of his life was spent in London, where he was born, but in 1939 he moved to Oxford with the university press for which he worked and was buried there following his early death.
THE ASSUMPTION
Charles Williams
With arms all bare to household toil
And a little child in hand,
The Mother of God goes on, goes on,
Beside her Peter, beside her John,
And chanting priest and singing bard,
And Michael the warrior for her guard,
She walks a fertile land.
She treads the ways of Sarras town
As Nazareth she trod,
She knows to mend, she knows to cook,
She knows on Lord Jesus’ face to look,
Before her feet the high kings ran.
She, the Maid, is the Mother of Man,
She is the Mother of God.
Sorrow and Labour and Delight
Go surely up with her.
Softly and gaily she goes on,
As when she did her sandals don,
As when she rinsed the cup and can
For blessed Joseph, a laboring man,
And God, a Carpenter.