Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today is Good Friday, at least for the Western tradition it is for the Western Church.

The Eastern Church's Good Friday is next week. But I wanted to read a Good Friday poem to you this week.

And I'm going to read one from Christina Rosetti.

She lived from 1830 to 1894.

She was an English poet.

You've heard from her on this show before.

She wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and even children's poems,

as well as Christmas carols, such as in the bleak midwinter,

which was later set to music. And the poem that I'm going to read to you today is called Good Friday.

This is how it goes.

Am I a stone and not a sheep that I can stand, O Christ, beneath thy cross, to number, drop by drop, thy blood's

slow loss, and yet not weep. Not so those women loved who, with exceeding grief, lamented

thee. Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly. Not so the thief was moved. Not so the sun and moon,

which hid their faces in a starless sky, a horror of great darkness at broad noon.

Aye, only I. Yet give not o'er, but seek thy sheep, true shepherd of the flock.

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more and smite a rock.

So if we look at the scenario in this poem, the poet is saying,

Unlike Mary, unlike Peter, unlike the

criminal up on the thief up on the cross, she can look at the cross and know the power of

what's going on there. But despite that, she has this, it doesn't move her to tears she and she regrets this she regrets

that even the sun and the moon can have this physical response and in her she feels it seems

...