Friday, April 3, 2026

Good Friday by Christina Rossetti

It's rather surprising that there are no (very) famous poems about Good Friday in English. The best I could find was this one from Christina Rossetti. I love Rossetti's poetry, but I hadn't encountered this one before. I think it's pretty good, though hardly one of her best.

Good Friday

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

2 comments:

  1. The fact that there are so few has been annoying to me. Trying to find poems on holy week you are about as likely to run into poems about the Easter Rising as you are actually about Holy Week. For instance Joyce Kilmar's Easter Week always shows up.

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    1. Indeed! I've found exactly the same phenomenon looking for books about Easter!

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