Christ My Song - 2476
I bore with thee long weary days and nights
(Christina G. Rosetti/Johannes Thomas Rüegg)
I bore with thee.
1. I bore with thee long weary days and nights,
through many pangs of heart, through many tears;
I bore with thee, thy hardness, coldness, slights,
for three and thirty years. PDF - Midi
2. Who else had dared for thee what I have dared?
I plunged the depth most deep from bliss above;
I not my flesh, I not my spirit spared:
give thou me love for love.
3. For thee I thirsted in the daily drought,
for thee I trembled in the nightly frost:
much sweeter thou than honey to my mouth;
why wilt thou still be lost?
4. I bore thee on my shoulders, and rejoiced,
men only marked upon my shoulders borne
the branding cross; and shouted hungry-voiced,
or wagged their heads in scorn.
5. Thee did nails grave upon my hands; thy name
did thorns for frontlets stamp between mine eyes:
I, Holy One, put on thy guilt and shame;
I, God, Priest, Sacrifice.
6. A thief upon my right hand and my left;
six hours alone, athirst, in misery:
at length in death one smote my heart and cleft
a hiding-place for thee.
7. Nailed to the racking cross, than bed of down
more dear, whereon to stretch myself and sleep;
so did I win a kingdom, – share my crown;
a harvest, – come and reap.
Christina G. Rosetti, in: Philip Schaff: Christ in Song, 1870, 345-346.