Belloc’s Verse on Our Lady and the Challenge of Faith

As we ourselves gratefully remember Hilaire Belloc this year, especially on the 60th Anniversary of his death, let us first consider “Courtesy,” his brief and evocatively allusive poem of seven short, rhymed stanzas (six four-line ones, and a final three-line stanza). For, it shows a special aspect of Belloc’s own humble answering heart: indeed the intimate bond he perceived between attentive courtesy and charity. We shall then also better be able to consider how he later met and expressed the challenge of the Faith: given the Faith’s inherent tests, or trials, and its unmistakable adventures, hence risks.

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