Gethsemane

Extract

Sorrowful, lo, these wonders hight,

And sorrow shall ye see forthright.

Dolores nostros, saith Isay,

He bore, and David, in his day,

Clamavi die et nocte.

Can’st thou forget, Gethsemane,

The Saviour’s tears and agony?

Alone, unfriended, faint, betrayed,

Lowly, with faltering lips he prayed, Transeat calix iste!

THE SCOURGING OF OUR LORD

How hath my guilty forfeit shent Thy loveliness, with blows forespent,

Wasted with vigil! Domine,

In Filium tuum respice,

Et miserere ei!

Whence is Thy kingly vestment red As those whose feet the vintage tread? Pitiless, lo, thy foes prepare ....

The furrows of the fatal share ....

Ecce Agnus Dei!

THE CROWN OF THORNS

Fair as a flower on Mary’s breast,

The infant brow her love caressed,

Now languished bears the badge of scorn, And bends beneath the Crown of Thorn; Inter spinas, liliuml Great Caesar’s laurel wreath, I trow,

Must fade, his pomp the worms endow; Time doth all garlands else decay,

Of every Thorn shall weave a ray, Christianorum gaudium.

E. Hamilton Moore.