| |
| HE sat upon the “ass’s foal” and rode | |
| On to Jerusalem. Beside Him walked | |
| Closely and silently the faithful twelve, | |
| And on before Him went a multitude | |
| Shouting Hosannas, and with eager hands | 5 |
| Strewing their garments thickly in His way. | |
| The unbroken foal beneath Him gently stepped | |
| Tame as its patient dam; and as the song | |
| Of “Welcome to the Son of David!” burst | |
| Forth from a thousand children, and the leaves | 10 |
| Of the waved branches touch’d its silken ears, | |
| It turn’d its wild eye for a moment back, | |
| And then, subdued by an invisible hand, | |
| Meekly trode onward with its slender feet. | |
| |
| The dew’s last sparkle from the grass had gone | 15 |
| As He rode up Mount Olivet. The woods | |
| Threw their cool shadows freshly to the west, | |
| And the light foal, with quick and toiling step, | |
| And head bent low, kept its unslacken’d way, | |
| Till its soft mane was lifted by the wind | 20 |
| Sent o’er the mount from Jordan. As he reach’d | |
| The summit’s breezy pitch, the Saviour raised | |
| His calm blue eye—there stood Jerusalem! | |
| Eagerly he bent forward, and beneath | |
| His mantle’s passive folds, a bolder line | 25 |
| Than the wont slightness of his perfect limbs | |
| Betrayed the swelling fulness of His heart. | |
| There stood Jerusalem! How fair she look’d— | |
| The silver sun on all her palaces, | |
| And her fair daughters ’mid the golden spires | 30 |
| Tending their terrace flowers, and Kedron’s stream | |
| Lacing the meadows with its silver band, | |
| And wreathing its mist-mantle on the sky | |
| With the morn’s exhalations. There she stood— | |
| Jerusalem—the city of his love, | 35 |
| Chosen from all the earth; Jerusalem— | |
| |
| That knew him not—and had rejected him; | |
| Jerusalem—for whom he came to die! | |
| The shouts redoubled from a thousand lips | |
| At the fair sight; the children leap’d and sang | 40 |
| Louder Hosannas; the clear air was fill’d | |
| With odour from the trampled olive-leaves— | |
| But “Jesus wept.” The loved disciple saw | |
| His master’s tears, and closer to his side | |
| He came with yearning looks, and on his neck | 45 |
| The Saviour leant with heavenly tenderness, | |
| And mourn’d—“How oft, Jerusalem! would I | |
| Have gather’d you, as gathereth a hen | |
| Her brood beneath her wings—but ye would not!” | |
| |
| He thought not of the death that he should die— | 50 |
| He thought not of the thorns he knew must pierce | |
| His forehead—of the buffet on the cheek— | |
| The scourge, the mocking homage, the foul scorn!— | |
| Gethsemane stood out beneath his eye | |
| Clear in the morning sun, and there, he knew, | 55 |
| While they who “could not watch with him one hour” | |
| Were sleeping, he should sweat great drops of blood, | |
| Praying the “cup might pass.” And Golgotha | |
| Stood bare and desert by the city wall, | |
| And in its midst, to his prophetic eye, | 60 |
| Rose the rough cross, and its keen agonies | |
| Were number’d all—the nails were in his feet— | |
| Th’ insulting sponge was pressing on his lips— | |
| The blood and water gushing from his side— | |
| The dizzy faintness swimming in his brain— | 65 |
| And, while his own disciples fled in fear, | |
| A world’s death-agonies all mix’d in his! | |
| Ay—he forgot all this. He only saw | |
| Jerusalem,—the chosen—the loved—the lost! | |
| He only felt that for her sake his life | 70 |
| Was vainly given, and, in his pitying love, | |
| The sufferings that would clothe the heavens in black | |
| Were quite forgotten. Was there ever love, | |
| In earth or heaven, equal unto this? | |
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