Emerging Scholars Network posted this poem yesterday in honor of Maundy Thursday. It seems applicable to all the events of Holy Week, so inspired by them I want to share it with you today, on that Friday we call Good.
The Agony (George Herbert)
Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behoove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.
Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments bloody be.
Sin is that press and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through ev’ry vein.
Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blo0d; but I, as wine.
Text from Christian Classics Ethereal Library; spelling slightly modernized.
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