“The dew’s last sparkle from the grass had gone
    As He rode up Mount Olivet.  The woods
    Threw their cool shadows directly to the west;
    And the light foal, with quick and toiling step,
    And head bent low, kept up its unslackened way
    Till its soft mane was lifted by the wind
    Sent o’er the mount from Jordan.  As He reached
    The summit’s breezy pitch, the Saviour raised
    His calm blue eye—­there stood Jerusalem! 
    Eagerly He bent forward, and beneath
    His mantle’s passive folds a bolder line
    Than the wont slightness of His perfect limbs
    Betrayed the swelling fulness of His heart. 
    There stood Jerusalem!  How fair she looked—­
    The silver sun on all her palaces,
    And her fair daughters ’mid the golden spires
    Tending their terrace flowers; and Kedron’s stream
    Lacing the meadows with its silver band
    And wreathing its mist-mantle on the sky
    With the morn’s exhalation.  There she stood,
    Jerusalem, the city of His love,
    Chosen from all the earth:  Jerusalem,
    That knew Him not, and had rejected Him;
    Jerusalem for whom He came to die!

    “The shouts redoubled from a thousand lips
    At the fair sight; the children leaped and sang
    Louder hosannas; the clear air was filled
    With odor from the trampled olive leaves
    But ‘Jesus wept!’ The loved disciple saw
    His Master’s tear, and closer to His side
    He came with yearning looks, and on his neck
    The Saviour leaned with heavenly tenderness,
    And mourned, ’How oft, Jerusalem! would I
    Have gathered you, as gathereth a hen
    Her brood beneath her wings—­but ye would not!’

    “He thought not of the death that He should die—­
    He thought not of the thorns He knew must pierce
    His forehead—­of the buffet on the cheek—­
    The scourge, the mocking homage, the foul scorn!

    “Gethsemane stood out beneath His eye
    Clear in the morning sun; and there, He knew,
    While they who ‘could not watch with Him one hour’
    Were sleeping, He should sweat great drops of blood,
    Praying the cup might pass!  And Golgotha
    Stood bare and desert by the city wall;
    And in its midst, to His prophetic eye
    Rose the rough cross, and its keen agonies
    Were numbered all—­the nails were in His feet—­
    Th’ insulting sponge was pressing on His lips—­
    The blood and water gushed from His side—­
    The dizzy faintness swimming in His brain—­
    And, while His own disciples fled in fear,
    A world’s death agonies all mixed in His! 
    Ah!—­He forgot all this.  He only saw
    Jerusalem—­the chosen—­the loved—­the lost! 
    He only felt that for her sake His life
    Was vainly given, and in His pitying love
    The sufferings that would clothe the heavens in black
    Were quite forgotten.