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MARY AT THE CROSS.

ings will bring to the human race.

feel her own misery.

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But she can only

To understand the seventh and eighth, it is necessary to know that, among other strange things accepted by the early Church, it was believed that the mother of Jesus had no suffering at his birth. This of course rendered her incapable of perfect sympathy with other mothers. It is a lovely invention, then, that he should thus commend mothers to his mother, telling her to judge of the pains of motherhood by those which she now endured. Still he fails to turn aside her thoughts. She is thinking still only of her own and her son's suffering, while he continues bent on making her think of others, until, at last, forth comes her prayer for all women. This seems to me

a tenderness grand as exquisite.

The outburst of the chorus of the Faithful in the last stanza but one,

When he rose, then fell her sorrow,

is as fine as anything I know in the region of the

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1 The rhymes of the first and second and of the fourth and fifth lines throughout the stanzas, are all, I think, what the French call feminine rhymes, as in the words "sleeping," weeping." This I think it better not to attempt retaining, because the final unaccented syllable is generally one of those e's which, having first become mute, have since been dropped from our spelling altogether.

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1 For the grammatical interpretation of this line, I am indebted to Mr. Richard Morris. Shall is here used, as it often is, in the sense of must, and rede is a noun; the paraphrase of the whole being, “Son, what must be to me for counsel?" What counsel must I follow?"

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2 "Do not blame me, it is my nature."

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I think my readers will not be sorry to have another of a similar character.

I sigh when I sing

For sorrow that I see,
When I with weeping

Behold upon the tree,

1 Mon is used for man or woman: human being. It is so used in Lancashire still they say mon to a woman.

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1 "They weep quietly and becomingly." I think there must be in this word something of the sense of gently, uncomplainingly.

2 "And are shrunken (clung with fear) like the clay." So here is the same as as. For this interpretation I am indebted to Mr. Morris.

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I add two stanzas of another of like sort.

Man that is in glory and bliss,

And lieth in shame and sin,
He is more than unwis

That thereof will not blynne.
All this world it goeth away,
Me thinketh it nigheth Doomsday;

Now man goes to ground :

Jesus Christ that tholed ded
He may our souls to heaven led

Within a little stound.

unwise.

cease.

perishes.
endured death.

lead.

moment.

1 "It is no wonder though it pleases me very ill."

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