Easter Day by John Masefield - Part 3

I'm having a break from my blog for the Easter holidays, and so here is something I prepared earlier. It is the third of four parts of a transcript of an Easter play by John Masefield (best known for "The Box of Delights"), published in 1929. Other parts will follow in the week. Like his Christmas play, this is quite non-traditional and imaginative.

Parts 1-2 here:
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2018/04/easter-day-by-john-masefield-part-1.html
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2018/04/easter-day-by-john-masefield-part-2.html

Easter Day by John Masefield - Part 3

(The stone is rolled back, the ANIMA CHRISTI appears)

ANIMA CHRISTI

O God, my Peace, on whom my hope was fixt,

To Whom, in agony, my thought did strive

The while I drank the cup my coming mixt,

Thou hast maintained me out of hell alive,

Out of the strangling bonds that suffered so,

This flesh I brother still, for all its scars,

I step to Life unspeakable and know

The primrose and the night-wind and the stars.

The cock that crowed for Peter ends the night,

O benediction of the morning's change,

Out of the eastern darkness light on light,

Mountain on mountain gleaming, range on range.

O Brother Men, who suffered at my side,

Come with me to this freedom, to befriend

The friendless, the abhorred, the crucified,

And make their spirits steadfast to the end.

GESTAS

I will come with you, but I am not used

To this same happiness that thrills me through,

I am all lapped in dying and bemused,

Yet I shall conquer this and follow you.

DISMAS

I will not follow you, for I belong

First to my tribe that ride the desert sand,

Counting the townsman's right a cruel wrong

And righting what we suffer spear in hand.

And I shall go to where my people are,

There in their tents beside the picket pins

Whereat the tethered stallions squeal and jar

And the drowsed camels cud the thorny whins.

GESTAS

I, whom my body thwarted, now behold

New wonders ; for new powers enter me

As rain that fills a channel, and the old

Is like Time's dust that spots eternity.

THE ANGELS sing

Sing, for the thing that was

Is withered like the grass,

Death's dominations pass

And life increases.

Sing, because Man receives

This April of green leaves

Whose living impulse cleaves

The rocks in pieces.

Sing, because Man receives

This Mercy that reprieves,

That blesses and relieves

And lifts and lightens.

Sing, because Man is given

This Peace of sins forgiven,

This gateway into Heaven

That burns and brightens.

THE ANIMA CHRISTI

Wherever hearts grow faint,

Where sinner stands, or saint,

Confounded by constraint

With courage reeling,

To such Myself will come

To stay their martyrdom,

Strength to the failing some,

To the sick, healing.

I hold the gates ajar :

O Man, the things that are

Are wondrous, star on star,

Glory on glory,

Mind on triumphant mind,

A new-made human kind,

Follow and you shall find

I go before ye.

(During and after this singing the ANIMA CHRISTI and DISMAS and

GESTAS pass back into the Quire.)