Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself; yea, move
As scudding swans pass lithely on a seaward stream!
Thou wilt have everything thou wert made great to love;
Thou wilt have ease for every dream;
No nails with fang will hold thy purpose to one aim;
There will be arbours round about thee, not one trunk
Against thy shoulders pressed and burning them with hate,
Yea, burning with intolerable flame.
O lips, such noxious vinegar have drunk,
There are through valley-woods and mountain-glades
Rivers where thirst in naked prowess wades;
And there are wells in solitude whose chill no hour abates!
Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself! A sign
Thou wilt become to many, as a shooting star.
They will believe thou art æthereal, divine,
When thou art where they are;
They will believe in thee and give thee feasts and praise.
They will believe thy power when thou hast loosed thy nails;
For power to them is fetterless and grand:
For destiny to them, along their ways,
Is one whose Earthly Kingdom never fails.
Thou wilt be as a prophet or a king
In thy tremendous term of flourishing—
And thy hot royalty with acclamations fanned.
Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself!... Beware!
Art thou not crucified with God, who is thy breath?
Wilt thou not hang as He while mockers laugh and stare?
Wilt thou not die His death?
Wilt thou not stay as He with nails and thorns and thirst?
Wilt thou not choose to conquer faith in His lone style?
Wilt thou not be with Him and hold thee still?
Voices have cried to Him, Come down! Accursed
And vain those voices, striving to beguile!
How heedless, solemn-gray in powerful mass,
Christ droops among the echoes as they pass!
O soul, remain with Him, with Him thy doom fulfil!
UNSURPASSED
LORD Jesus, Thou didst come to us, to man,
From Godhead’s open golden Halls,
From Godhead’s hidden Throne
Of glory, no imagination can
Achieve, and it must glow alone,
Behind a cloud that falls
Over the Triune Perfectness its voice
Of thunder, making Cherubim rejoice,
And Seraphim as doves in rapture moan.
Yet Thou didst come to us a wailing child,
Homeless, tied up in swaddling-clothes,
To live in poverty
And by the road: then, with detractions piled,
And infamies of misery
From scourge and thorns and blows,
To die a felon fastened into wood
By nails that in their jeering harshness could
Clamp vermin of the forests to a tree.
And Thou dost come to us from Heaven each day,
Obeying words that call Thee down
On mortal lips; and Thou,
Jesus, dost suffer mortal power to slay
Its God in sacrifice: dost bow
Thy bright Supremacy to lose its Crown,
Closed in a prison, yet through Godhead free
To every insult, gibe and contumely—
Come from Forever to be with us Now.
So Thou dost come to us. But when at last
Thou callest us to come to Thee,
We only have to die,
Only from weary bones our flesh to cast,
Only to give a bitter cry;
Yea, but a little while to see
Our beauty falling from us, in its fall
Destined to lose its suasions that enthral,
Destined to be as any gem put by.
We but fulfil our stricken Nature’s law
To fail and to consume and end;
While Thou dost come and break,
Coming to us, Thy Nature with a flaw
Of death and for our mortal sake
Thou dost Thy awful wholeness rend.
Oh, let me run to Thee, as runs a wind,
That leaves the withered trees, it moved, behind,
And triumphs forward, careless of its wake!