The Wings of the Dove

(To make this a blog exclusively about the Wings of the Dove click here.)

The title of this book refers to Psalm 55 so the image of a dove that we find there is what first occurs to us when Milly is compared to a dove:

My heart is sore pained within me:
and the terrors of death are fallen upon me. 

Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me,
and horror hath overwhelmed me. 

And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove!

For then would I fly away, and be at rest.

That is not the only image of the dove that we find in the Bible. For example, Psalm 68 came up in Matins today:

At home the women already share the spoil.
They are covered with silver as the wings of a dove,
its feathers brilliant with shining gold
and jewels flashing like snow on Mount Zalmon.

By the way, although we think of the dove as a white bird, the bird referred to here is the common rock dove, or rock pigeon, which is to say the bird we all call a pigeon. And take the time to study them carefully and you'll notice they are beautiful birds.

"She's a dove," Kate went on, "and one somehow doesn't think of doves as bejewelled. Yet they suit her down to the ground."

If we don't it's because we are blind.