Trod He within Gethsemane
With Peter and sons of Zebedee
To them He offered His meagre plea
“Stay here and keep watch with Me.”

Knelt He on the verdant grass,
Lifted His gaze to the onyx vast,
Begged still His thrumming human heart,
And wept for want of another path.

There prostrate He lay but listening
Attentive to His father’s whispering
From His head dread’s crimson drizzling,
In His eyes His sorrow glistening.

Returned He to where sleeping they sat,
He awoke them thrice for arrived was Iscariot,
The betrayal a burden, yet with patience He carried it
And even afraid He did not tarry it.

Still the betrayer was hailed a ‘friend’,
Through potent fear of the coming end,
And when His companions did defend,
He took the soldier’s ear to mend.

He went willing under arrest,
Willing to high priest Caiaphas,
Observed the myriad false witnesses,
Watched as they determined His death.

At His face they lobbed their spit
And into Him they bashed their fist,
They offered Barabbus’ sentence to lift,
Yet “crucify Him” the crowd still hissed

His followers they tried to find,
As, fearful, they had run to hide,
When found they Peter, he indeed lied
Denied, Denied as prophesied.

The Messiah's gaze upon Peter bestowed
As thrice did the rooster crow
And bitterly Peter cried for sinking so low
And bitterly cried for the Man of Sorrows

So too with guilt did Judas succumb,
For he had betrayed such innocent blood,
Threw into the Temple the thirty silver fund
And in the potter’s field he hung.

While thirty-nine lashes the Saviour was flogged
As the crowd beat Him and shouted and mocked,
Upon Him a robe of scarlet they donned,
Remained ignorant to the Son of God.

He lifted His head as they adorned
What crown they had twisted out of thorns.
We stand within the crowd to scorn
Our Saviour crucified, forlorn

At Golgotha, place of the skull,
For him, his agony to dull,
They held out a drink with gall
But he refused and endured in full.

The crowd called for His miracle rescue
As the torture through Him suffused
And atop the cross they drew
‘Of Nazareth, Here, the King of the Jews’.

Blood and dirt with tears entwined,
Features severed until He was unrecognised,
The Lord made flesh, as prophesied
Gave with grace this unmatched sacrifice.

He cried out so His spirit left,
Upon the world fell a great darkness,
The Temple curtain in two cleft,
“Surely He was God,” soldiers confessed

‘Eloi Eloi Lama Sabbachthani,’
Hell’s folly cried out victory,
“Forgive them, Father,” His final plea,
The Saviour hung still upon the tree.

This the cost for death to conquer,
Our souls wayward no longer
But destination clearly yonder,
On this day, we are called to ponder,

All for children fallen astray
Sin at last was forever slain
Our hearts rendered pure, unstained
As He named good Earth’s darkest day.

Eleanor Cooper is a journalism and creative writing student, writing from Sydney, Australia, and I am currently an editor at the Western Sydney University newspaper.