Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

W. Garrett Horder, comp. The Poets’ Bible: New Testament. 1895.

Christ Weeping over Jerusalem

John Keble (1792–1866)

WHY doth my Saviour weep

At sight of Sion’s bowers?

Shows it not fair from yonder steep,

Her gorgeous crown of towers

Mark well His holy pains:

’Tis not in pride or scorn

That Israel’s King with sorrow stains

His own triumphal morn.

It is not that His soul

Is wandering sadly on,

In thought how soon at death’s dark goal

Their course will all be run,

Who now are shouting round

Hosanna to their Chief;

No thought like this in Him is found,

This were a Conqueror’s grief.

Or doth He feel the Cross

Already in His heart,

The pain, the shame, the scorn, the loss?

Feel even His God depart?

No: though he knew full well

The grief that then shall be—

The grief that Angels cannot tell—

Our God in agony.

It is not thus He mourns;

Such might be martyr’s tears,

When His last lingering look He turns

On human hopes and fears;

But hero ne’er or saint

The secret load might know,

With which His spirit waxeth faint;

His is a Saviour’s woe.

“If thou hadst known, even thou,

At least in this thy day,

The message of thy peace! but now

’Tis passed for aye away:

“Now foes shall trench thee round,

And lay thee even with earth,

And dash thy children to the ground,

Thy glory and thy mirth.”

And doth the Saviour weep

Over His people’s sin,

Because we will not let Him keep

The souls He died to win?

Ye hearts that love the Lord,

If at this sight ye burn,

See that in thought, in deed, in word,

Ye hate what made Him mourn.