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Home  »  Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse  »  S. Mary Magdalene

Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.

By Richard Crashaw (1613?–1640)

S. Mary Magdalene

 
    NOT in the evening’s eyes
    When they red with weeping are
        For the sun that dies
    Sits sorrow with a face so fair:
Nowhere but here did ever meet        5
Sweetness so sad, sadness so sweet.
 
    When Sorrow would be seen
    In her brightest majesty
        (For she is a queen),
    Then is she dress’d by none but thee.        10
Then, and only then, she wears
Her proudest pearls, I mean thy tears.
 
    The dew no more will weep,
    The primrose’s pale cheek to deck;
        The dew no more will sleep,        15
    Nuzzled in the lily’s neck:
Much rather would it be thy tear,
And leave them both to tremble here.