O FAITHFUL CROSS! O noblest tree!
In all our woods there’s none like thee:
No earthly groves, no shady bowers,
Produce such leaves, such fruit, such flowers.
Sweet are the nails, and sweet the wood.
That bears a weight so sweet, so good.
Sing, my tongue, devoutly sing
The glorious laurels of our King:
Sing the triumphant victory
Gained on the cross erected high;
Where man’s Redeemer yields his breath.
And, dying, conquers hell and death.
With pity our Creator saw
His noblest work transgress his law,
When our first parents rashly ate
The fatal tree’s forbidden meat;
He then resolved the cross’s wood
Should make that tree’s sad damage good.
By this wise method God designed
From sin and death to save mankind;
Superior art with love combines,
And arts of Satan countermines:
And where the traitor gave the wound,
There healing remedies are found.
When the full time decreed above
Was come to show this work of love,
Th’ Eternal Father sends his Son,
The world’s Creator, from his throne!
Who on our earth, this vale of tears,
Clothed with a virgin’s flesh appears.
Thus God, made man, an infant lies.
And in the manger weeping cries;
His sacred limbs, by Mary bound,
The poorest tattered rags surround;
And God’s incarnate feet and hands
Are closely bound with swathing bands.
Full thirty years were fully spent
In this our mortal banishment;
And then the Son of Man, decreed
For the lost sons of men to bleed,
And on the cross a victim laid.
The solemn expiation made.
Gall was his drink; his flesh they tear
With thorns and nails; a cruel spear
Pierces his side, from whence a flood
Streams forth, of water mixed with blood:
With what a tide are washed again
The sinful earth, the stars, the main!
Bend, towering tree, thy branches bend.
Thy native stubbornness suspend:
Let not stiff nature use its force;
To weaker saps have now recourse:
With softest arms receive thy load,
And gently bear our dying God.
On thee alone the Lamb was slain
That reconciled the world again;
And when on raging seas was tost
The shipwrecked world and mankind lost.
Besprinkled with his sacred gore.
Thou safely brought them to the shore.
All glory to the sacred Three,
One undivided Deity:
To Father, Holy Ghost, and Son,
Be equal praise and homage done:
Let the whole universe proclaim
Of One and Three the glorious Name.