In the centre of their inmost souls they wore thee, Where rack and torment striv'd in vain to reach thee. Little, alas! thought they Who tore the fair breasts of thy friends, For thee, and serv'd them in thy glorious ends. That impatient fire The heart that hides thee hardly covers? Each wound of theirs was thy new morning, With blush of thine own blood thy day adorning : Of wrath, and made the way through all these wounds. Welcome, dear, all-adored name! For sure there is no knee That knows not thee; Or if there be such sons of shame, When stubborn rocks shall bow, And hills hang down their heav'n-saluting heads To seek for humble beds Of dust, where, in the bashful shades of night, Next to their own low nothing they may lie, And couch before the dazzling light of thy dread Majesty. They that by love's mild dictate now Shall then, with just confusion, bow And break before thee. RICHARD CRASHAW, (1644.) KYRIE ELEISON. ORD, many times I am aweary quite Of mine own self, my sin, my vanity Yet be not Thou, or I am lost outright, Weary of me. And hate against myself I often bear, Best friends might loathe us, if what things per verse We know of our own selves, they also knew Lord, Holy One! if Thou who knowest worse Shouldst loathe us too! R. C. TRENCH. THE SHADOW OF A GREAT ROCK IN A WEARY LAND. HE pathways of Thy land are little changed Since Thou wert there; The busy world through other ways hath ranged, And left these bare. The rocky path still climbs the glowing steep Of Olivet, Though rains of two millenniums wear it deep, Men tread it yet. Still to the gardens o'er the brook it leads, Before his sheep the shepherd on it treads, The wild fig throws broad shadows o'er it still, Peasants go home at evening up that hill And as when gazing Thou didst weep o'er them The white roofs of discrowned Jerusalem These ways were strew'd with garments once and palm, Which we tread thus ; Here through Thy triumph on Thou passedst, calm, On to Thy cross. The waves have washed fresh sand upon the shore Of Galilee ; But chiselled on the hill-sides evermore Man has not changed them in that slumbering land, Nor time effaced; Where Thy feet trod to bless me still may stand; All can be traced. Yet we have traces of Thy footsteps far Where'er the poor and tried and suffering are, |