Monday, March 21, 2016

A Poem for Monday in Holy Week

I'm posting a poem and a picture for each day of Holy Week this year. Here's the poem for Monday in Holy Week. If you can only read a bit of it, make it the last stanza.

The Incarnation and Passion
by Henry Vaughan

Lord! when thou didst thy selfe undresse 
Laying by thy robes of glory, 
To make us more, thou wouldst be lesse, 
And becam'st a wofull story. 

To put on Clouds instead of light, 
And cloath the morning-starre with dust, 
Was a translation of such height 
As, but in thee, was ne'r exprest; 

Brave wormes, and Earth! that thus could have 
A God Enclos'd within your Cell, 
Your maker pent up in a grave, 
Life lockt in death, heav'n in a shell; 

Ah, my deare Lord! what couldst thou spye 
In this impure, rebellious clay, 
That made thee thus resolve to dye 
For those that kill thee every day? 

O what strange wonders could thee move 
To slight thy precious bloud, and breath! 
Sure it was Love, my Lord; for Love 
Is only stronger far than death.

2 comments:

Marcy said...

These are beautiful. If you know offhand what books they're (I mean any of the week's poems) found in, could you include that? Though I'm sure looking it up myself won't be too hard.

Jessica Snell said...

Of course! This poem is one I found in my collected works of Vaughan and Herbert.

I had a few poems I knew I wanted to use, and for the rest, I'm just looking through likely collections. :)

The Chesterton poem from yesterday is in the public domain, I believe, and pretty easily found online. (Well, actually, all the poems I'm using are in the public domain...)