Thy pathway led thro' suffering, shame, and human woe,
'Mid sorrows deep that none beside could ever know;
Gethsemane's anticipative, earnest prayers,
The bloody sweat, the agony, the cries and tears,
That deeper indignation, and that fiercest wrath,
And all the terrors that God's holy judgment hath,
The draining of that bitter cup which none could share,
Which only God could give and only Thou couldst bear;
All the-se were Thine, and Thou beneath the awful weight
Of all this world's load of sin, on darken'd Calvary's height,
Hung on the cross, where mocking men could satiate
In league with hell their cruel scorn and fiendish hate.
Thou there didst bend beneath the overflowing surge
Of human enmity—with Satan there to urge,
With hellish haste, malignant prompter of the world,
Of all the scorn that at Thy sacred Head was hurl'd.
Such, Lord, Thy wondrous path to life—forsaken, lone,
Uncheer'd thro' death's dark path where light had never shone;
Bereft of all—what eye but Thine could surely see
Right thro' the grave to Resurrection-victory?
Whose power but Thine could then have borne sin's heavy load,
And not be crush'd but conquering find the way to God?
Who else but Thou could now a mighty Victor stand
With glory, honor crown'd, Thou Man of God's right hand?
Thy path of life to pleasures led divinely given,
To joys that form and tune the highest joys of heaven;
For angels sing Thy might deeds on earth below,
And all the ranks of heaven with heighten'd rapture glow;
The spacious plains of earth shall soon take up the song,
And answering shouts the joyful chorus shall prolong,
From hill and dale shall rise throughout the wide domain
Thy thrice-repeated worthy, worthy, worthy Name,
And Thou for me the darksome power of death hast quell'd,
The grave is light, its pitchy darkness all dispell'd;
I follow on—if Thou shouldst call, triumphant sing:
Where now thy victory, O Grave—O Death, thy sting?
R. B. (Senr.).