Sunday, July 6, 2014

"...Risen to live free..."

Meditation for a Sunday Morning

(An anonymous poem published in 1908 by "L")


RESURRECTION

Hope, last of all the angels, left the three
 Who with their woman’s courage watched Christ die;
       But Hope, when she had fled,
 Returned to plant in them one humble flower,
 The thought that in His grey sepulchral bower
    They three might strew around the Dead
 The alms of one adoring sympathy,
       And pray a last good-bye.
They sped in silence, but the sharp-fanged doubt
 Lurked in the path to mock their pungent store
       Of spices, hissing, “Nay,
 Ye cannot reach the Tenant of that gloom.”
 But when the dawn and they retouched the tomb,
    They found the stone was rolled away,
 And He, their Life who died, now stood without,
       Alive for evermore.
Thus when we seek our buried innocence
 With bitter myrrh and grey-leaved rosemary,
       And writhing doubts delay
 Our steps towards the tomb of our desire,
 Do Thou, O Lord, our musing eyes inspire
    To see the stone is rolled away,
 And find that self has thrown its grave-clothes hence
       And risen to live free.


" L"

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