“JUXTA CRUCEM.”
“Dear Lord,” we say, “could we have stood
With thy sweet Mother and Saint John
Beside thy cross; or knelt and clung—
Heedless what ruffian eyes look’d on—
With Magdalen’s wild grief, and flung
Our arms about th’ ensanguined wood!...”
But have we not the Crucified
Among us, “even at the door”?
Whom else behold we, day by day,
In the sore-laden, patient poor?
And where disease makes want its prey,
Can we not stand that cross beside?
O blest vocation, theirs who come,
At chosen duty’s high behest,
To soothe the squalid couch of pain
With pledges of a better rest
Than all earth’s wealth can give or gain,
And whispers of eternal home!
Never so near our Lord as then,
We touch His Wounds—more heal’d than healing:
Never so close to Mary’s Heart,
Hear too for us its throbs appealing:
And when for other scenes we part,
It is with John and Magdalen.