XXVIII.

And when the traitor's art

Had done its hateful part,

And speechless he, and uncomplaining stood, By cruel scourges torn,

While many a piercing thorn

Bedew'd his godlike brow with streams of blood, And the coarse rabble, with insulting cry, Taunted his patient grief, and mock'd his agony.

XXIX.

When on the cross he hung

With parch'd and feverish tongue,
By torture dire and dreadful anguish spent,
Till Earth's convulsive groan

Proclaim'd his spirit flown,

While the hills trembled, and the rocks were rent, And heaven itself lay wrapt in distant gloom, And many a buried saint rose from his bursting tomb.

XXX.

What feeling then was thine?
Did thy pure heart repine

At thy child's anguish? or in him beholding
All sorrow slain at last,

And Death's dread empire past,

Couldst thou rejoice, e'en while, thy arms enfolding His gentle corpse in their most pure embrace, Thou gazed'st thro' thy tears on that pale lifeless face.

XXXI.

And when, his conflicts o'er,
From Hades' shadowy shore

Return'd, he rose triumphant o'er the tomb,
Oh! shared he not with thee

In tenderest sympathy

His joy and triumph for man's alter'd doom? Wast thou alone, of all he loved, forgot, The only friend on earth whom he remember'd not?

XXXII.

Where wast thou in that hour

When he, by Death's dark power Enthrall'd erewhile in his sepulchral prison,

Once more on earth was seen

By faithful Magdalene?

Why heardst not thou the greeting, "He hath

risen!

Come, see the place in which the Saviour lay; The seal is broken now, the stone is roll'd away?

XXXIII.

For many a day appear'd

That form and face revered

?"

Where brethren met, and many a word was spoken

By that divinest voice,

Which made their hearts rejoice

In pain and peril; yet he left no token,
By man recorded, of especial love,

No word or thought of thee ere yet he went above.

XXXIV.

We know not, nor may guess

Why slept his tenderness

(Or seem'd to sleep) once deeply felt tow'rd thee;

Or if indeed he came

In heart and soul the same,

E'en as in childhood he was wont to be,
To lay his deathless trophies at thy feet,

And all his pangs to thee and all his joys repeat.

XXXV.

Such things may well have been

Too sacred to be seen

By human eye, or told by human pen;

And till thy aged breast

Sank to its final rest,

And thy form faded from the eyes of men,
Such parting words may in its depths have dwelt

As gave thee peace and joy which none but thou have felt.

XXXVI.

But vain all efforts be,

Of venturous phantasy

To such dim heights of shadowy thought to climb:

Almost unmeet it seems

To suffer her wild dreams

Round thee to float, and in fantastic rhyme
Depict thee to the mind's believing eye
In false and fading tints of airy imagery.

XXXVII.

We deem thee bright and fair,

Almost as angels are,

And haply such thou wast; but few endure

To picture thee grown old,

Midst sorrows manifold,

Widow'd and childless, feeble, frail and poor,

With wrinkled brow, and locks of hoary gray,

And

eye grown

dim and dull by years of slow decay.

XXXVIII.

Nor love our hearts the gloom

That rests upon the tomb

Wherein thou lay'st, to hungry worms a prey,
Nor bear, in thought, to trace
Corruption's foul embrace

Wasting thy sweet mortality away.

Thou art too fair, too heavenly bright a thing To bear the loathly breath of such imagining.

XXXIX.

But thee, with features mild,

On thy celestial child

Down looking in bright youth's resplendent bloom,

We cherish with fond heart;

As many a limner's art

Shadows thee forth, unsullied by the gloom Of years or mortal pain, thy gentle eyes Beaming forth Heaven's own love, like gleams from Paradise.

XL.

And yet methinks 'twere well

Our foolish hearts should dwell

On thy fair image e'er in its decay,

Remembering that of old,

Beneath the wormy mould,

As we must lie, the Saviour's mother lay;
Like us the grave, like us corruption saw,

Subject, like us and ours, to Death's unbending law.

XLI.

'Twas thine on earth to share

Whatever griefs we bear,

Christ's parent, yet our sister, and to thee
Our reverent hearts look back

O'er Time's mysterious track,

As to the first by Heaven ordain'd to be A Christian matron, that most holy thing Which human thought can frame in all its wandering.

XLII.

And woman, who began

Then first to rank with man,

His subject, but thenceforth no more his slave, Derives in part from thee

Her righteous victory

O'er injury and wrong, and o'er thy grave

In thought laments, meet reverence to express To thee in Christian rights, her first great ances

XLIII.

Such honours still be thine :

Such wreaths for ever twine

Around thy sepulchre as now we bring;

Such greetings thither come,

From many a Christian home,

[tress.

Where wife, and husband, and glad children sing At morn and eve their hymn of peace and love, For comfort here below, to Him who reigns above.

XLIV.

Let Christian maids from thee,

Type of virginity,