Nor joys in cattle’s blood. Slain be all flocks;
Be every herd upburned into smoke;
That expiatively ’t may pardon win
Of but one sin: in vain at so vile price;
135 Will the stained figure of the Lord—foul flesh—
Prepare, if wise, such honours: but the hope
And faith to mortals promised of old—
Great Reason’s counterpart—hath wrought to bring
These boons premeditated and prepared
140 Erst by the Father’s passing parent-love;
That Christ should come to earth, and be a man!
Whom when John saw, baptism’s first opener, John,
Comrade of seers, apostle great, and sent
As sure forerunner, witness faithful; John,
145 August in life, and marked with praise sublime,
He shows, to such as sought of olden time
God’s very Paschal Lamb, that He is come
At last, the expiation of misdeed,
To undo many’s sins by His own blood,
150 In place of reprobates the Proven One,
In place of vile the dear; in body, man;
And, in life, God: that He, as the slain Lamb,
Might us accept, and for us might outpour
Himself Thus hath it pleased the Lord to spoil
155 Proud death: thus wretched man will able be
To hope salvation. This slain paschal Lamb
Paul preaches: nor does a phantasmal shape
Of the sublime Lord (one consimilar
To Isaac’s silly sheep) the passion bear,
160 Wherefore He is called Lamb: but ’tis because,
As wool, He these renewed bodies clothes,
Giving to many covering, yet Himself
Never deficient. Thus does the Lord shroud
In His Sire’s virtue, those whom, disarrayed
165 Of their own light, He by His death redeemed,
Virtue which ever is in Him. So, then,
The Shepherd who hath lost the sheep Himself
Re-seeks it. He, prepared to tread the strength
Of the vine, and its thorns, or to o’ercome
170 The wolf’s rage, and regain the cattle lost,
And brave to snatch them out, the Lion He
In sheepskin-guise, unasked presents Himself
To the contemned teeth, baffling by His garb
The robber’s bloody jaws.
Thus everywhere