Daily Reading for March 29 • Monday in Holy Week
“Father to me Thou art, and Mother dear,
And Brother too, kind Husband of my heart!”
So speaks Andromache in boding fear,
Ere from her last embrace her hero part—
So evermore, by Faith’s undying glow,
We own the Crucified in weal or woe.
Strange to our ears the church-bells of our home,
The fragrance of our old paternal fields
May be forgotten; and the time may come
When the babe’s kiss no sense of pleasure yields
Even to the doting mother: but Thine own
Thou never canst forget, nor leave alone.
There are who sigh that no fond heart is theirs,
None loves them best—O vain and selfish sigh!
Out of the bosom of His love He spares—
The Father spares the Son, for thee to Die:
For thee He died—for thee He lives again:
O’er thee He watches in His boundless reign.
Thou art as much His care, as if beside
Nor man nor angel lived in Heaven or earth:
Thus sunbeams pour alike their glorious tide
To light up worlds, or wake an insect’s mirth:
They shine and shine with unexhausted store—
Thou art thy Saviour’s darling—seek no more.
From a poem for the Monday before Easter, in The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays Throughout the Year by John Keble (London: Suttaby and Co., 1883).