Of converse or of audience, wherein I Seem to be bearing here a part too large-- Perhaps," repeated Mary, "now our guest Will tell us something of his master Buddha"-- She therewith resting, as to yield him room. "Another day, if I may choose, for that," Said Krishna; "pardon me my hasty word, And pray thee let thine own tale choose its way." Then Mary: "It were sad to tell the end, How Jesus died, save that He afterward Rose gloriously, and that before He died, In prospect near of dying, He spake words So gracious and so full of victory! How well we know it now; but, alas, then Our hearts were holden and we did not know! Strange that we did not know, for oft he said, Oft, and in many ways, remembered since, That He would die and after rise again. Yet, at the last, when He of dying spake, Our hearts were charged with sorrow, and when He died Our hearts, they broke with sorrow and with no hope. "O, it was beautiful, most beautiful-- It seems so to the backward-looking eye, Which sees it now, when all is over and done, The shame and sharpness of the cross gone by, And He safe sitting in the glory of God-- Beautiful and pathetic beyond words (Pathetic still, though all be over and done, Secure the issue and blesséd), the way in which Our Savior faced His future welcoming it, That future with its unescapable cross, Its mystery of His Father's smile withdrawn! For truly, though our Lord by faith foreknew The end beyond the seeming end, the dawn To be after the shadow of the night-- The dawn, the day, the everlasting day!-- Yet horror possessed His almost-drowning soul Of that which He must suffer ere the end. Peter and James and John told us of how, Alone of all companionship, retired From them even whom He had chosen to be with Him, He, in the garden of Gethsemane At midnight of the night before the cross, Prayed, and in agony great drops of blood Shed as in sweat, desiring with desire To have the cup removed that He must drink. It could not be, it was not, dread of death, Though painful and though shameful, shook Him so--"