For thou hast now i-wept full yore."

MARY: "I ask thee, Maudeleyn, where is that place,--
In plain or valley or in hill?
Where I may hide in any case
That no sorrow come me till.
For He that all my joy was,
Now death with Him will do its will;
For me no better solace is
Than just to weep, to weep my fill."
The Maudeleyn comforted me tho.
To lead me hence, she said, was best:
But care had smitten my heart so
That I might never have no rest.

"Sister, wherever that I go
The woe of Him is in my breast,
While my Sone hangeth so
His pains are in mine own heart fast.
Should I let Him hangen there
Let my Son alone then be?
Maudeleyn, think, unkind I were
If He should hang and I should flee."

* * * * *

I bade them go where was their will,
This Maudeleyn and everyone,
And by myself remain I will
For I will flee for no man.

From St. Bernard's "Lamentation On Christ's Passion."

Engl. version, 13th Cent., by Richard Maydestone.

PART TWO

CHAPTER XIX

THE DESCENT AND BURIAL

And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean
linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had
hewn out in the rock.

S. Matt. XXVII, 59, 60.

It is meet in very truth to bless thee the Theotokos, the
ever-blessed and all-immaculate and Mother of our God.
Honoured above the Cherubim, incomparably more glorious than
the Seraphim, thou who without stain gavest birth to God the
Word, and art truly Mother of God, we magnify thee.

BYZANTINE.

The end had come--so it must have seemed to those who had loved and
followed our Lord. As they came back from the burial, those of them who
had remained true to the end, as they came out of their hiding places,
those others who forsook Him and fled, they met in that "Upper Room"
which was already consecrated by so many experiences. They came back
from Joseph's Garden, S. John leading the blessed Mother, the Magdalen
and the other Mary following, S. Peter came from whatever obscure corner
he ha