Dimly His eyes flashed, laden with presage, Telling of strife and triumph to be; Gracious His lips, and glowed with a message Merciful, strong to set prisoners free. Lord, use our myrrh and our urns of gold; Fairer than children of men to behold, Thine is the sceptre and victory! We worship Thee.
WHAT love it was that Thou shouldst choose to feel The chill of valleys where no dawns emerge To break the mist, and streams repeat the dirge For faith crushed like a pearl beneath man’s heel.
How just it was that Thou our Judge shouldst learn The force of taunts that goad us into sin, And slowly aureoled perfection win Through blackened hopes, and through the stripes that burn.
Thou who didst steel thy will to impotence, And wouldst not save Thyself, or take control Of force, make us so dead that we may live.
Thou God of sorrows, wash our penitence, Thou who wast naked, help each smitten soul, Christ strong to suffer, stronger to forgive.
AS some weak bird, tossed homeward by the gale, Is safely nested in the rocky scar That cleaves the curving beach, but hears afar The ocean writhing at the tempest’s flail,
So thou, my soul, hast reached the refuge hill That Pilate made a pleasance for his jest, And in Christ’s rose-red side hast found a rest, Borne half by passion, yet by conscious will.
O Lord, whose spirit waged so hard a fight, Scorn not the tainted thing beside thy heart As too unfit to feel that sacred glow;
But lest I ere forget how much I owe, Let not the vision utterly depart Of frenzied storm and all-engulfing night.
LONG, long ago He died, and yet He is not dead; From out His riven side and patient hands that bled Flows one unebbing tide, by love and pity fed.
God’s heart is satisfied, man’s eyes are upward led, And o’er the desert wide, the dew that’s downward shed Drawn from that flowing tide, forms flowers white and red.
HOPE, last of all the angels, left the three Who with their woman’s courage watched Christ die; But Hope, when she had fled, Returned to plant in them one humble flower, The thought that in His grey sepulchral bower They three might strew around the Dead The alms of one adoring sympathy, And pray a last good-bye.
They sped in silence, but the sharp-fanged doubt Lurked in the path to mock their pungent store Of spices, hissing, “Nay, Ye cannot reach the Tenant of that gloom.” But when the dawn and they retouched the tomb, They found the stone was rolled away, And He, their Life who died, now stood without, Alive for evermore.