Poem by Alice Meynell

The Crucifixion

 "A Paltry Sacrifice." — PREFACE TO A PLAY

            Oh, man's capacity
For spiritual sorrow, corporal pain!
Who has explored the deepmost of that sea,
With heavy links of a far-fathoming chain?

            That melancholy lead,
Let down in guilty and in innocent hold,
Yea into childish hands delivered,
Leaves the sequestered floor unreached, untold.

            One only has explored
The deepmost; but He did not die of it.
Not yet, not yet He died. Man's human Lord
Touched the extreme; it is not infinite.

            But over the abyss
Of God's capacity for woe He stayed
One hesitating hour; what gulf was this?
Forsaken He went down, and was afraid.

1. The Spring to the Summer
2. The Launch
3. The Joyous Wanderer
4. The Two Shakespeare Tercentenaries
5. The Two Questions

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