| |
| THEY smote Messias on the face; | |
| Even in their outraged judgment-place, | |
| And all the furious concourse round | |
| Rang with intense and passionate sound, | |
| The scream of hate, the deadlier cry | 5 |
| Of craft and malice, “Crucify!”— | |
| But vast and tranquil now the crowd | |
| Whose anthems and whose harps are loud, | |
| Stainless and numberless the throng | |
| Which rings Thee round with rapturous song, | 10 |
| And earth shall see her Lord again, | |
| Confessed of Angels and of men. | |
| |
| They rent from off Him, as He stood, | |
| The purple, darkened with his blood; | |
| Upon His brows the thorny crown | 15 |
| With blows their cruel hands beat down | |
| (O Saviour, O my King, Thy soul | |
| Felt all the billows o’er Thee roll),— | |
| But who hath woven Thy raiment now? | |
| What splendour burns about Thy brow? | 20 |
| Since e’en the saints who stand around | |
| Are linen-robed and jewel-crowned. | |
| |
| A reed into His pinioned hand | |
| Was thrust by that blaspheming band: | |
| They laughed aloud at Israel’s King | 25 |
| Thus sceptred and thus triumphing.— | |
| But no man, in these latter days, | |
| Finds laughter in His gentle ways: | |
| He neither strives nor cries; He goes | |
| In silence amid clamouring foes; | 30 |
| Yet realms and ages rise and sing | |
| Christ the supreme, the world-wide King. | |
| The reed is in Thy hands, O God, | |
| Victorious o’er the iron rod. | |
| |
| No longer friendless and forlorn, | 35 |
| Blasphemed, forsaken, and forsworn, | |
| Betrayed, entrapped, and hunted down,— | |
| But crowned with many an awful crown, | |
| The crowns of Truth, and Life, and Love, | |
| And hell beneath and heaven above; | 40 |
| And oft-times, when a saint holds breath | |
| For terror in the Vale of Death, | |
| He finds Thy footsteps printed there, | |
| And learns to languish and to dare, | |
| And holds Thy passion more divine | 45 |
| Than praising harps or gems that shine, | |
| And crowns (but not as one who scorns) | |
| His Captain with a crown of thorns. | |
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