The Sorrow Of Sorrows

WOMAN, those hands are bare that were love's throne,

On alien props thy helpless arms are spread;

Thy hope is mocked at, and thy glory fled,

Thy labour nought; love could not make thine own

Him, who was of thy flesh and of thy bone;

By woman's tears is no man's doom withstead;

Prayer could not ransom that devoted head;

Grief cannot pierce death's silence with its moan.

Thou—sainted mother of a son divine—

Whose lips are guarded by thy chastened will,

The blind, brute anguish marked thee with its sign

Before love crucified beheld thee still—

Indrawn—as one who travails with a birth,

Vast as the shadow which o'erwhelms the earth.