REDEMPTION.
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��These piteous words lamenting, thus address'd :
"Sir, if 'tis thou hast ta'en my Lord from hence, Let pity sway to ease my sorrowing breast, Allay my anguish, suage the pangs of grief, And tell, Oh ! tell me, where he now is laid, That I may take him thence, and with due rites Funereal, his sacred form compose."
So she, with streaming eye, and thin drawn tone, The voice of wasting grief, plaintive besought, Eager to run, impatient of delay, Or pause between each ling'ring moment, slow, That poignant kept her back from her lost Lord. Benignant He, with soft compassion graced, And tone familiar to her anxious ear, Said Mary. Simple the sound, but transport To her sense, whose sorrowing plaint, is now To radiant joy and rapture, instant changed. Rabboni I trill'd on her joy quiv'ring lips, As eagerly she press'd towards the Lord, Before him fell, essay'd his knees to clasp, And kiss the gashes in his feet and hands. Which, tenderly, the Master thus repressed :
"Rise, Mary, this forbear, and touch me not, For I must now ascend to whence I came. Go tell my brethren, that I'm ris'n again, And to my Father must ascend, and yours."
A path sequester'd winds through Hamam's vale, With jagged rocks and beetling crags o'erhung; Yet not of sylvan beauties void, adorn'd With terebinthines' tap'ring spires, cedars, Dense piny groves, whose pleasing shades, fragrant From odorous winds, each babbling brook pursues,
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