A Poem for Good Friday

"Good Friday" 

by Christina Rossetti

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. 

"Growing up in a home divided between the passions of an Italian father and the moral rigidity of an Anglo-Italian mother, Rossetti's life is marked by two conflicting themes: her unconventional passion for intellect and her search for God and His divine direction. These tensions led her to writes some of the most arresting and original religious poems of the Victorian Age.... In 1871 Christina contracted Graves' Disease, a form of hyperthyroidism, which froze her face like a mask. Though racked by pain for the next twenty years, she continued to publish works of devotional poetry and prose, including a commentary on the book of Revelation, The Face of the Deep, published two years before her death of cancer" (Shadow and Light: Literature and the Life of Faith, 2nd Edition, 437).