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.