Classic Poem

First N UNCIUS . Chorus OF J EWISH W OMEN . Second N UNCIUS .

I FROM the horrid'st act that ever fed
The fire of barbarous rage at length am fled;
Yet O too near! The object still pursues,
Floats in mine eyes, and that sad scene renews.

Chorus .

Art thou a witness of His misery?
Saw'st thou the Galilean Prophet die?

First N UNCIUS .

Those savages, to Scythian rocks confin'd,
Who know no God, nor virtue of the mind,
But only sense pursue; who hunger tame
With slaughter'd lives; they and their food the same;
Would this detest.

Chorus .

Vain innocence! would none
Lend Him a tear? were all transform'd to stone?

First N UNCIUS .

No, certainly; yet so commiserate
As pity prov'd more tyrannous than hate.
The cursed tree with too much weight oppress'd
His stooping shoulders; death had now releas'd
His fainting soul; but O, the lenity
Of malice would not suffer Him to die.
Part of the load impos'd with idle scorn
On Lybian Simon, in Cyrene born,
To whom th' affected quiet of the fields,
Secur'd by poverty, no safety yields.
The furies of the city him surprise,
Who from the vices of the city flies;
Who bears not his own burden, that none may
Misdoubt, the innocent became their prey.

Chorus .

Forthwith unmask this wretched face of woe;
All that He suffer'd, and the manner show;
What words brake from His sorrow; give thy tongue
A liberal scope: our minds not seldom long
To know what they abhor: nor spare our ears;
What can be heard is fancied by our fears.

First N UNCIUS .

Without the city, on that side which lies
Exposed to the boist'rous injuries
Of the cold north, to war a fatal way,
Infamous by our slaughters, Golgotha
Exalts his rock. No flowers there paint the field,
Nor flourishing trees refreshing shadows yield:
The ground all white, with bones of mortals spread,
Stench'd with the putrefaction of the dead,
And relics of unburied carcases.
Who on his aged father's throat durst seize,
Rip up his mother's womb; who poison drest
For his own brother; or his unknown guest
Betray'd, and gave his mangled flesh for food
Unto the wild inhabitants of the wood;
This stage of death deserv'd: while ev'ry foul
Misdeed of theirs pursues the guilty soul.
Now when the Nazarite at this dismal place
Arrived, with a weak and tardy pace,
Lest He should die too quickly, some prefer
Sweet wine mix'd with the bitter tears of myrrh.
He of the idle present hardly tastes,
But to encounter with His torments hastes.
The steel now bored His feet, whose slit veins spout
Like pierced conduits; both His arms stretch'd out.
His hands fix'd with two nails. While His great soul
These tortures suffer'd, while the rising bole
Forsook the earth, and crimson torrents sprung
From His fresh wounds, He gave His grief no tongue.
The Cross advanc'd and fix'd; then, as more nigh
To His own heav'n, His eyes bent on the sky,
Among such never to be equall'd woes,
(Who would believe it!) pities His stern foes;
And thinks those false contrivers, those who gor'd
His flesh with wounds, more fit to be deplor'd:
Who ev'n their merited destruction fears;
And, falsely judg'd, the truly guilty clears.
" Father, " He cries, " forgive this sin; they knew
Not what they did, nor know what now they do. "
Meanwhile the soldiers, who in blood delight,
With hearts more hard than rocks behold this sight,
And savage rigour, never reconcil'd
To pity, all humanity exil'd;
Who, us'd to pillage, now intend their prey;
Nor for His death, though then a dying, stay;
But He alive, and looking on, divide
The spoil; yet more in the spectator joy'd.
Fury in trifles sports; their scorn His poor
Yet parted garments distribute to four.
His inward robe, with one contexture knit,
Nor of the like division would admit,
Their votes to the dispose of lots refer,
Electing chance for their blind arbiter.
Nor was't the least of evils to behold
Th' ignoble partners of His pain, who old
In mischief robb'd the murder'd passengers,
Follow'd by troops, that fill'd the night with fears.
While thus they hung, none could the doubt explain,
Whether He more had sav'd than they had slain.
The num'rous index of each bloody deed
Now brand their lives: when those who could not read
At such a distance, of the next inquire
For what they died; who had the same desire.
But above His declining head they hung
A table in three languages: the tongue
The first of tongues, which taught our Abrahamites
Those heav'nly precepts, and mysterious rites;
Next, that which to th' informed world imparts
The Grecian industry, and learned arts;
Then this, from whence the conquer'd earth now takes
Her laws, and at the Roman virtue quakes;
All of one sense: His place of birth, His name
Declare; and for the Hebrew King proclaim.
After the bloody priests so long had fed
On this lov'd spectacle, at length they read
The title: and in such a misery,
So full of ruth, found something to envy:
The governor intreating to take down
That glorious style, lest He the Hebrew crown
Should vindicate in death; and so deny
That princes by subordinates should die.
But who that day so readily complied
To give a life, austerely this denied.

Chorus .

While ling'ring death His sad release deferr'd,
How look'd the standers-by? what words were heard?

First N UNCIUS .

Not all alike: discording murmurs rise.
Some, with transfixed hearts, and wounded eyes,
Astonish'd stand; some joy in His slow fate,
And to the last extend their barbarous hate.
Motion itself variety begets,
And, by a strange vicissitude, regrets
What it affected, nor one posture bears:
Tears scornful laughter raise, and laughter tears.
Who to the Temple from th' impoverish'd shore
Of Galilee His follow'd steps adore,
And minister'd to His life, now of His end
The witnesses, still to their dying Friend
Their faith preserve; which, as they could, they show
In all th' expressions of a perfect woe.
One, from her panting breast her garments tare;
Another, the bright tresses of her hair;
This, with her naked arms her bosom beats;
The hollow rock her fearful shrieks repeats,
She stiff with sorrow. But what grief could vie
With that example of all piety,
His Virgin Mother's! this affords no way
To lessening tears, nor could itself display.
Where should she fix her looks? If on the ground,
She sees that with her blood, He bleeding, drown'd:
Or if she raise her eyes, the killing sight
Of her womb's tortur'd Issue quench'd their light.
Fearing to look on either, both disclose
Their terrors; who now licenses her woes.
Ready to have stept forward, and embrac'd
The bloody Cross, her feeble limbs stuck fast:
Her feet their motion lost; her voice in vain
A passage sought: such grief could not complain.
Whose soul almost as great a sorrow stung,
As His Who on the tree in torments hung.
That youth, one of the twelve, so dignified
By his dear Master's love, stood by her side.
Beholding this sad pair — those souls that were
To Him than life, while life remain'd, more dear —
He found another cross: His spirits melt,
More for the sorrow seen than torments felt.
At length, in strength transcending either, brake
The bars of His long silence, and thus spake:
" A legacy to each of you I leave:
Mother, this son instead of Me receive
By thy adoption; and, thou gentle boy,
The seed of Zebedeus, late My joy,
Thy friend now for thy mother take. " This said,
Again He to His torments bow'd His Head.
The vulgar, with the elders of our race,
And soldiers, shake their heads in His disgrace:
" Is this the Man, " said they, " Whose Hands can raze
The Temple, and rebuild it in three days?
Now show Thy strength. Or if the Thunderer
Above the rank of mortals Thee prefer,
Acknowledg'd for His Heir, let Him descend,
Confirm Thy hopes, and timely succour lend.
Behold, the help Thou gav'st to others fails
The Author. Break these bonds, these stubborn nails,
And from the Cross descend: then we will say
Thou art our King, and Thy commands obey. "
Nor was't enough that the surrounding throng
Wound with reproaches: who beside him hung
Doth now again a murderer's mind disclose,
And in his punishment more wicked grows.
Who thus: " If thou be He Whom God did choose
To govern the freed nation of the Jews,
Thyself and us release; thus honour win. "
The partner of his death, as of his sin,
Who had his fierceness with the thief cast off,
Ill brooks, and thus reproves the impious scoff:
" Hast thou as yet not learnt to acknowledge God,
Nor sacred justice fear, who now the rod
Of vengeance feel'st? wilt thou again offend,
And to the jaws of hell thy guilt extend?
This death we owe to our impiety;
But what are His misdeeds? why should He die? "
Then looking on His Face with drooping eyes,
" Forgive me, O forgive a wretch, " He cries,
" And O my Lord, my King, when Thou shalt be
Restor'd to Thy own heav'n, remember me. "
He mildly gives consent; and from the bars
Of that sad Cross, thus rais'd him to the stars:
" With Me, a happy guest, thou shalt enjoy
Those sacred orchards, where no frosts destroy
The eternal spring, before the morn display
The purple ensign of th' ensuing day. "

Chorus .

What's this! the centre pants with sudden throes!
And trembling earth a sad distemper shows!
The sun, affrighted, hides his golden head,
From hence by an unknown ecliptic fled!
Irregular heavens abortive shades display,
And night usurps the empty throne of day!
What threats do these dire prodigies portend
To our offending race? Those ills transcend
All that can be imagin'd, which enforce
Disturbed nature to forget her course.
I hear approaching feet: Whate'er thou art,
Whom darkness from our sight conceals, impart
All that thou know'st to our prepared ears:
Accomplish, or dissolve our pressing fears.

Second N UNCIUS .

Fury (from which, if loose, the earth had fled)
And fatal stars have their event: He's dead!

Chorus .

O heaven! we pardon now day's hasty flight,
Nor will complain, since they have quench'd this light.
Yet tell how He dispos'd of His last breath,
The passages and order of His death.

Second N UNCIUS .

As the declining sun the shades increas'd,
Reflecting on the more removed east,
His blazing hair grew black; no cloud obscures
His vanish'd light; this his own orb immures.
The day's fourth part as yet invests the pole,
Were this a day, when from the Afflicted Soul,
This Voice was clearly heard, not like the breath
Of those who labour between life and death:
" My God, O why dost Thou Thy own forsake? "
Which purposely the multitude mistake,
But to prolong their cruel mirth: who said,
He on the Thesbian Prophet calls for aid,
Now to return, and draw from heav'n again
Devouring show'rs of fire, or floods of rain.
With silence this He endures. His body rent,
His blood exhausted, and His spirits spent,
He cried, " I thirst. " As servants to His will,
The greedy hollows of a sponge they fill
With vinegar, which hyssop sprigs combine,
And on a reed exalt the deadly wine.
This scarcely tasted, His pale lips once more
He opens, and now louder than before
Cried, " All is finish'd; here My labours end:
To Thee, O Heavenly Father, I commend
My parting Soul. " This said, hung down His head,
And with His words His mixed Spirits fled,
Leaving His Body, which again must bleed,
Now senseless of the Cross. From prison freed,
Those happy seats He enjoys, by God assign'd
To injur'd virtue, and th' etherial mind.
But terrors, which with nature war, affright
Our peaceless souls. The world hath lost its Light:
Heav'n, and the deeps below, our guilt pursue:
Pale troops of wand'ring ghosts now hurry through
The Holy City; whom from her unknown
And secret womb the trembling earth hath thrown.
The cleaving rocks their horrid jaws display,
And yawning tombs afford the dead a way
To those that live. Heaven is the general
And undistinguish'd sepulchre to all.
Old Chaos now returns. Ambitious night,
Impatient of alternate rule, or right,
Such as before the day's etherial birth
With her own shady people fills the earth.

Chorus .

How did the many-minded people look,
At these portents? with what affection strook?

Second N UNCIUS .

The lamentations, mixed with the cries
Of weeping women, in loud volleys rise.
Those who had known Him, who His followers were
While yet He liv'd, and did in death adhere,
In that new night sighs from their sorrows send,
And, to those heav'ns they could not see, extend
Their pious hands, complaining that the sun
Would then appear when this was to be done.
The safety of their lives the vulgar dread;
Some for themselves lament, some for the dead;
Others the ruin of the world bewail.
Their courages the cruel Romans fail:
Those hands, which knew no peace, now lazy grew;
And conqu'ring fear to earth their weapons threw.
Th' amaz'd centurion with our thoughts complied,
And swore the Hero most unjustly died:
Whose punishment the earth could hardly brook,
But groaning, with a horrid motion shook.
Confirmed by the day's prodigious flight
To be a beam of the celestial light:
And so the mourning heav'n's inverted face
Shows to the under world His heav'nly race.

Chorus .

Why flock the people to the Temple thus?
No cause, excepting piety, in us
Can want belief. Hope they to satisfy
With sacrifice the wrath of the Most High?

Second N UNCIUS .

New prodigies, as horrid, thither hale
Th' astonish'd multitude. The Temple's veil,
That hung on gilded beams in purple dy'd,
Asunder rent, and fell on either side.
The trust of what was sacred is betray'd,
And all the Hebrew mysteries display'd.
That fatal Ark, so terrible of old
To our pale foes, which cherubims of gold
Veil'd with their hov'ring wings; whose closure held
Those two-leav'd Tables, wherein God reveal'd
His Sacred Laws; that Food, which by a new
Example fell from heav'n in fruitful dew
About our tents, and tacitly express'd
By intermitted show'rs the Seventh Day's rest;
The Rod with never-dying blossoms spread,
Which with a mitre honour Aaron's head:
These with th' old Temple perish'd: th' eye could reach
No object in this rupture but the breach.
What was from former ages hid is shown;
Which struck so great a rev'rence when unknown.
The Temple shines with flames; and to the sight
That fear'd recess disclos'd with its own light.
Either religion from their fury flies,
Leaving it naked to profaner eyes:
Or God doth this abhorred seat reject,
And will His Temple in the mind erect.

Chorus .

Shall punishment in death yet find an end?
Shall His cold corpse to earth in peace descend?
Or naked hang, and with so dire a sight
Profane the vesper of the sacred night?

Second N UNCIUS .

Too late religion warms their savage breasts,
Lest that near hour which harbingers their Feast
Should take them unprepar'd; to Pilate they
Repair; entreat him that the soldier may
From bloody crosses that their bodies down
Before their festivals the morning crown,
That no uncleanness might from thence arise,
In memory of th' Egyptian sacrifice.
The legs of the two thieves they break, whose breath
Yet groan'd between the bounds of life and death.
The crashing bones report a dreadful sound,
While both their souls at once a passage found.
Nor had the cohort less to Jesus done,
Who now the course prescrib'd by fate had run:
But dead, deep in His Side his trembling spear
A soldier strake: His entrails bare appear;
And from that wide-mouth'd orifice a flood
Of water gush'd mix'd with a stream of blood.
The Crosses now discharged of their fraught,
The people fled; not with one look or thought;
Part sad and part amaz'd. Spent fury dies.
Whither so fast? run you to sacrifice
A silly lamb? Too mean an offering
Is this for you, who have sacrific'd your King.

Chorus .

Either deceiv'd by the ambiguous day,
Or troops of mourners to my eyes display
A perfect sorrow: women with their bare
And bleeding breasts, drown'd cheeks, dishevell'd hair.
The soldiers slowly march, with knees that bend
Beneath their fears, and Pilate's stairs ascend.

Chorus OF R OMAN S OLDIERS .

O THOU who on thy flaming chariot rid'st,
And with perpetual motion time divid'st,
Great king of day, from whose far-darting eye
Night-wand'ring stars with fainting splendour fly,
Whither, thus intercepted, dost thou stray?
Through what an unknown darkness lies thy way?
In heav'n what new-born night the day invades?
The mariner, that sails by Tyrian Gades,
As yet sees not thy panting horses steep
Their fiery fetlocks in th' Hesperian deep.
No pitchy storm, wrapt up in swelling clouds,
By earth exhal'd, thy golden tresses shrouds;
Nor thy pale sister in her wand'ring race
With interposed wheels obscures thy face;
But now far-off retires with her stol'n light,
Till in a silver orb her horns unite.
Hath some Thessalian witch with charms unknown
Surpris'd and bound thee? What new Phaeton,
With feeble hands to guide thy chariot strives,
And far from the deserted zodiac drives?
What horrid fact, before th' approach of night,
Deservedly deprives the world of light:
As when stern Atreus to his brother gave
His children's flesh, who made his own their grave;
Or when the vestal Ilia's god-like son,
Who our unbounded monarchy begun,
Was in a hundred pieces cut, by theft
At once of life and funerals bereft?
Or hath that day wherein the gods were born
Finish'd the course of heav'n in its return;
And now the aged stars refuse to run
Beyond that place from whence they first begun?
Nature, what plagues dost thou to thine intend?
Whither shrinks this huge mass? what fatal end?
If now the general flood again retire,
If the world perish by licentious fire,
What shall of those devouring seas become?
Where shall those funeral ashes find a tomb?
Whatever innovates the course of things,
To men alone, nor nations, ruin brings:
Either the groaning world's disorder'd frame
Now suffers, or that pow'r which guides the same.
Do proud Titanians, with their impious war,
Again provoke th' Olympian Thunderer?
Is there a mischief extant greater than
Dire Python, or the Snake of Lerna's fen,
That poisons the pure heav'ns with viperous breath?
What god, from gods deriv'd, oppress'd by death,
Is now in his own heav'n bewail'd? Divine
Lyaeus gave to man less precious wine;
Not Hercules so many monsters slew;
Unshorn Apollo less in physic knew.
Sure we with darkness are enveloped
Because that innocent Blood by envy shed,
So dear unto the gods, this place defam'd,
Which shook the earth, and made the day asham'd.
Great Father of us all, Whose influence
Informs the world Thou mad'st, though sin incense
Thy just displeasure, easy to forgive
Those who confess, and for their vices grieve,
Now to the desperate sons of men, who stray
In sin's dark labyrinth, restore the day.
One sacrifice seek we to expiate
All our offences, and appease his hate.
Which the religion of the Samian,
Nor Thracian harp, wild beasts instructing, can;
Nor that prophetic boy, the glebe's swart son,
Who taught the Tuscans divination.
The Blood which from that mangled Body bled
Must purge our sins, Which we unjustly shed.
O smooth Thy brows! Receive the innocence
Of One for all; and with our guilt dispense.
For sin, what greater ransom can we pay?
What worthier offering on Thy altar lay?