EASTER MORNING.
WE went alone by the fields of rye
Just as the day was dawning,
The Marys, Salome, and I,
For it was Easter morning!
And each one carried with silent care
Jars of spices rich and rare,
Frankincense, and aloes, and nard,
Spices our faint hands had prepared
For our dear Lord's embalming.
When he walked by my side in happy days,
Through sunny Juda's rose-hedged ways,
Where myrrhs drop gum, and spikenards weep,
I gathered none then for his weary feet.
Now I come to his death's adorning!
Through the dreadful day that was dark at noon,
Through that night when he hung between us and the moon,
When the captains were mad and the priests were in error,
And the weak earth shaken with earthquake and terror,
With tears we had sought them here and there,
The gums so precious, the spices rare.
While the face of our Christ, so deadly white,
Came ever between us and the moon;
The face of our Christ, so deadly white,
That lay in the dark and dreadful tomb!
And it was Easter morning!
"Who will roll us away the stone?"
We said ere day was dawning,
As we, women went our way alone.
All on that Easter morning!
For the stone was sealed and very great,
Hard as iron and heavy as fate;
Stark it lay on the grave's dumb mouth
Where the white sepulcher faced the south
In Joseph's costly garden.
The shadowy garden that lapped it in,
Fair as pleasure and sweet as sin,
Where bulbuls sang through the slumberous air
Now who should look for a sepulcher there?
In the midst of Joseph's garden! We said,
"Who shall roll us away the stone?"
But save that word we uttered none;
While each, in fancy, looked in at the tomb,
Messiah's grave, by mortals hewn!
By human hands carved from the rock
That rose all white in the spectral light,
The bare, unyielding, flinty rock
That held in its hollow weird midnight
In the midst of Joseph's garden.
So, to the place where our dead Christ lay,
We came as the day was dawning;
And lo! The stone was rolled away!
For this was Easter morning.
But who dare stoop and look into the tomb?
That awful home of silence and gloom!
(Messiah's grave, by mortals hewn!)
Who dares to turn from the garden gay,
And search where the murdered Messiah lay
In the tomb of man's adorning!
Ah! Well for Mary Magdalene,
From her seven-fold sins washed pure and clean!
That she had brought to her living Lord,
While yet she joyed in his spoken word,
The spices for his embalming.
And well for us all if we dare, with her,
Stoop down and look in at the sepulcher;
And well for us all if we find within
Not the fleshless bones of treasured sin,
Not the foul uncleanness of lust and pride,
But the angel form of One glorified!
And the grave-clothes cursed the guilt we loved
In a little heap, and their power removed.
While from the whitest sepulcher
Whose darkness bid our Crucified,
Up from the moaning sepulcher
Messiah riseth glorified,
And it is Easter morning!
Emma E. Brewster.