Page:The Catholic prayer book.djvu/636

See upon the new King’s table,
The new Pasch, no more unstable,
Terminates the ancient Rite;
What was Old, the New effaces,
Truth the shadowy Type replaces,
Day dispels the dark of Night.

At the Supper what Christ acted,
What his loving law enacted,
Here is done by power Divine;
Here, in glad commemoration,
Is the solemn consecration
Of the Host from bread and wine.

Here the Christian dogma stated—
Bread is transubstantiated
Into Flesh, the wine to Blood
What not sight nor touch discerneth,
What no human learning learneth,
Simple faith hath understood.

Underneath the forms external—
Signs not things—sublime, supernal
Hidden secrets here we find—
Bread to Flesh; to Blood, wine's sweetness;
Christ in absolute completeness,
Is contained in either kind.

Undiminished by partaking,
Undivided in the breaking,
In each portion Christ finds room—
Thousands eat of what one eateth,
This one’s act the next repeateth,
Unconsuming, all consume.