| |
| HE sat upon the ass’s foal and rode | |
| Toward Jerusalem. Beside him walked, | |
| Closely and silently, the faithful twelve, | |
| And on before him went a multitude | |
| Shouting hosannas, and with eager hands | 5 |
| Strewing their garments thickly in his way. | |
| The unbroken foal beneath him gently stepped, | |
| Tame as its patient dam; and as the song | |
| Of “Welcome to the Son of David” burst | |
| Forth from a thousand children, and the leaves | 10 |
| Of the waved branches touched its silken ears, | |
| It turned its wild eye for a moment back, | |
| And then, subdued by an invisible hand, | |
| Meekly trode onward with its slender feet. | |
| |
| The dew’s last sparkle from the grass had gone | 15 |
| As he rode up Mount Olivet. The woods | |
| Threw their cool shadows freshly to the west, | |
| And the light foal, with quick and toiling step, | |
| And head bent low, kept its unslackened way | |
| Till its soft mane was lifted by the wind | 20 |
| Sent o’er the mount from Jordan. As he reached | |
| The summit’s breezy pitch, the Saviour raised | |
| His calm blue eye,—there stood Jerusalem! | |
| Eagerly he bent forward, and beneath | |
| His mantle’s passive folds, a bolder line | 25 |
| Than the wont slightness of his perfect limbs | |
| Betrayed the swelling fulness of his heart. | |
| There stood Jerusalem! How fair she looked,— | |
| The silver sun on all her palaces, | |
| And her fair daughters mid the golden spires | 30 |
| Tending their terrace flowers, and Kedron’s stream | |
| Lacing the meadows with its silver band, | |
| And wreathing its mist-mantle on the sky | |
| With the morn’s exhalations. There she stood,— | |
| Jerusalem,—the city of his love, | 35 |
| Chosen from all the earth; Jerusalem— | |
| |
| That knew him not, and had rejected him; | |
| Jerusalem, for whom he came to die! | |
| The shouts redoubled from a thousand lips | |
| At the fair sight; the children leaped and sang | 40 |
| Louder hosannas; the clear air was filled | |
| With odor from the trampled olive-leaves, | |
| But Jesus wept. The loved disciple saw | |
| His Master’s tears, and closer to his side | |
| He came with yearning looks, and on his neck | 45 |
| The Saviour leant with heavenly tenderness, | |
| And mourned: “How oft, Jerusalem! would I | |
| Have gathered you, as gathereth a hen | |
| Her brood beneath her wings,—but ye would not!” | |
| |
| He thought not of the death that he should die— | 50 |
| He thought not of the thorns he knew must pierce | |
| His forehead, of the buffet on the cheek, | |
| The scourge, the mocking homage, the foul scorn! | |
| Gethsemane stood out beneath his eye | |
| Clear in the morning sun, and there, he knew, | 55 |
| While they who “could not watch with him one hour” | |
| Were sleeping, he should sweat great drops of blood, | |
| Praying the cup might pass. And Golgotha | |
| Stood bare and desert by the city wall, | |
| And in its midst, to his prophetic eye, | 60 |
| Rose the rough cross, and its keen agonies | |
| Were numbered all,—the nails were in his feet, | |
| The insulting sponge was pressing on his lips, | |
| The blood and water gushing from his side, | |
| The dizzy faintness swimming in his brain, | 65 |
| And, while his own disciples fled in fear, | |
| A world’s death-agonies all mixed in his! | |
| Ay!—he forgot all this. He only saw | |
| Jerusalem,—the chosen, the loved, the lost! | |
| He only felt that for her sake his life | 70 |
| Was vainly given, and in his pitying love | |
| The sufferings that would clothe the heavens in black | |
| Were quite forgotten. Was there ever love, | |
| In earth or heaven, equal unto this? | |
| |
