AT the Cross thy station keeping

With the mournful mother weeping

Thou, unto the sinless Son

Weepest for thy sinful one.

Blood and water from His side

Gush; in thee the streams divide:

From thine eyes the one doth start,

But the other from thy heart.

Mary, for thy sinner, see,

To her Sinless mourns with thee:

Could that Son the son not heed,

For whom two such mothers plead ?

So thy child had baptism twice,

And the whitest from thine eyes.

The floods lift up, lift up their voice

With a many-watered noise!

Down the centuries fall those sweet

Sobbing waters to our feet,

And our laden air still keeps

Murmur of a Saint that weeps.

Teach us but, to grace our prayers,

Such divinity of tears,

Earth should be lustrate again

With contrition of that rain:

Till celestial floods o'er rise

The high tops of Paradise.