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Edward Farr, ed. Select Poetry of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. 1845.

Lines from “Diuers deuout and zealous Meditations”

III. Anonymous

Loquitur Crucifixus.

O MAN, look what shame for thee

Willingly I take on me:

See my bodie scourged round,

That it forms but all one wound,

Hanging vp ’twixt earth and sky,

Mocked and scorned by all goes by.

See my arms stretched wide and open,

And my sinews torne and broken.

See upon the cross I hang,

View these nails with bitter pang,

Which my own weight doth not tear,

But thy weighty sins I bear.

See my head, Oh me! forlorne,

Pierced deepe with cruel thorne,

Which so long thereon hath stood

That the twig runs down with blood.

View my feet, and see my side,

Pierced and plowed with furrows wide.

See, all comfort from me taken,

Both of heauen and earth forsaken;

And not one, with word or deed,

Pities me whilst here I bleed.

Yea, they all that stand in hearing,

Mocke me for my patient bearing,

And with scoffs augment my sore,

When for bitter paine I roar.

Eli! Eli! I am dying!

Hark! they mocke me too for crying

This I beare for thine amiss:

Was there euer paine like this?

Yea, and I do most fear that,

Lest thou, man, shouldst prove ingrat—

Now thou dost but make me smart;

But in that thou killst my heart.