Three Poems for Good Friday
Oscar Wilde, Hilaire Belloc, and John Fitzpatrick
Sonnet on Holy Week
I wandered through Scoglietto’s far retreat,
The oranges on each o’erhanging spray
Burned as bright lamps of gold to shame the day,
Some startled bird with fluttering wings and fleet
Made snow of all the blossoms, at my feet
Like silver moons the pale narcissi lay:
And the curved waves that streaked the great green bay
Laughed i’ the sun, and life seemed very sweet.
Outside the young boy-priest passed singing clear,
“Jesus the son of Mary has been slain,
O come and fill His sepulchre with flowers.”
Ah, God! Ah, God! those dear Hellenic hours
Had drowned all memory of Thy bitter pain,
The Cross, the Crown, the Soldiers and the Spear.
Oscar Wilde
Our Lord and Our Lady
They warned Our Lady for the Child
That was Our Blessed Lord,
And She took Him into the desert wild,
Over the camel’s ford.
And a long song She sang to Him
And a short story told:
And she wrapped Him in a woollen cloak
To keep Him from the cold.
But when Our Lord was grown a man
The rich they dragged Him down,
And they crucified Him in Golgotha,
Out and beyond the town.
They crucified Him on Calvary,
Upon an April day;
And because He had been Her little Son
She followed Him all the way.
Our Lady stood beside the Cross,
A little space apart,
And when She heard Our Lord cry out
A sword went through her heart.
They laid Our Lord in a marble tomb,
Dead, in a winding sheet.
But Our Lady stands above the world
With the white moon at her feet.
Hilaire Belloc
Mater Dolorosa
She stands, within the shadow, at the foot
Of the high tree she planted: thirty-three
Full years have sped, and such has grown to be
The stem that burgeoned forth from Jesse’s root.
Spring swiftly passed and panted in pursuit
The eager summer; now she stands to see
The only fruit-time of her only tree:
And all the world is waiting for the Fruit.
Now is faith’s sad fruition: this one hour
Of gathered expectation wears the crown
Of the long grief with which the years were rife;
As in her lap—a sudden autumn shower—
The earthquake with his trembling hand shakes down
The red, ripe Fruitage of the Tree of Life.
John Fitzpatrick, O.M.I.
Other Good Friday-appropriate meditations from Tradition & Sanity:
A Painter's Panoramic Passion
In the Christian art of the West prior to the Renaissance — and, indeed, in the paintings and sculptures of all civilizations known to us — it was common to depict multiple events, separated from each other in time and space, in one and the same work. This tendency to crowd a complex story into a single “frame” is one of those few universals that we can discern in the art of all peoples.
A setting of the "Stabat Mater" for Holy Week
Today, Maundy Thursday, and for the remainder of the Triduum, one should be thinking of little else than Our Blessed Savior and the intimate circle who shared in His Passion — especially Our Blessed Mother.
I wish you a blessed Good Friday and a joyous Easter.
Here is Christina Rossetti's poem "Good Friday."
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.
Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.
The Oscar Wilde is a favorite of mine. The wondrous pathos of it! Blessed Good Friday to you.