V.
“The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre.”
The Sabbath that could bring no rest,
The weary day at length had fled:
What Sabbath could again be blest
Since He who promised rest was dead?
The guilty world was hushed in gloom,
Night on its sleeping millions lay
Like the “great stone” upon His tomb—
What if it never rolled away!
But o'er her path there fell a shade
No darkness from her heart could hide:—
The tomb in which the Lord was laid
Was near the cross on which He died.
Beneath that cross she stood again:
The tortured form no more she saw;
His murderers were religious men,
Nor dropped one letter of the law;
His cry of agony might smite
Strange discord through their measured prayer;
And who, when death those lips made white,
Could silence the reproaches there?
Thus Earth among the spheres moved on,
And calmly kept her ordered course,
Bearing the cross of God the Son,
And in her heart His lifeless corpse:
Nor yet was blotted out of space,
Nor yet the brand of Cain doth bear;
Because, through His surpassing grace,
That cross pleads not “Avenge,” but “Spare.”
