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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

‘A Ballad of Trees and the Master’


By Sidney Lanier

A lay to think upon as we go a-farin' þrough Holy Week toward Great and Holy Easter.

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
'Twas on a tree they slew Him — last
When out of the woods He came.

____ Baltimore, November, 1880.

Source:  Poems of Sidney Lanier, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/579/pg579.html, Etext #579 by A. Light, July 1996, accessed 7 April 2015

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