Stabat Mater dolorosa
Juxta Crucem lacrimosa,
Dum pendebat Filius.
Cujus animam gementem,
Contristatam et dolentem,
Pertransivit gladius.
O quam tristis et afflicta
Fuit illa benedicta
Mater Unigeniti!
Quem maerebat, et dolebat,
Pia Mater, dum videbat
Nati paenas inclyti.
Quis est homo, qui non fleret,
Matrem Christi si videret
In tanto supplicio ?
Quis non posset contristari,
Christi Matrem contemplari
Dolentem cum Filio?
Pro peccatis suae gentis
Vidit Jesum in tormentis,
Et flagellis subditum.
Vidit suum dulcem natum
Moriendo desolatum,
Dum emisit spiritum.
Eia Mater, fons amoris,
Me sentire vim doloris
Fac, ut tecum lugeam.
Fac, ut ardeat cor meum
In amando Christum Deum,
Ut sibi complaceam.
Sancta Mater, istud agas,
Crucifixi fige plagas
Cordi meo valide.
Tui nati vulnerati,
Tam dignati pro me pati,
Paenas rnecum divide.
Fac me tecum pie flere,
Crucifixo condolere,
Donec ego vixero.
Juxta Crucem tecum stare,
Et me tibi sociare
In planctu desidero.
Virgo virginum praeclara,
Mihi jam non sis amara:
Fac me tecum plangere.
Fac, ut portem Christi mortem
Passionis fac consortum,
Et plagas recolere.
Fac me plagis vulnerari
Fac me cruce inebriari,
Et cruore Filii.
Flammis ne urar succensus
Per te, Virgo, sim defensus
In die judicii.
Christe, cum sit hinc exire,
Da per Matrem me venire,
Ad palmam victoriae.
Quando corpus morietur,
Fac, ut animae donetur
Paradisi gloria.
Amen.
Stabat Mater
She stood besidethe cross, and kept
her station by that gallows where He hung
Who was her Son. His mother wept
to be His mother, for her soul was wrung,
heaving with horror,
howling,broken—bored
as if it were impaled upon a sword.
Ah,what the grief and what the sadness
she bore, the happy one chosen to bear
the Only-Begotten to such badness
of pain! Ah, what atrocity was there:
to see her Child
and know the pangs He bore.
For all the torments that He felt, she saw.
And who is it,what man does not
feel, and at feeling, cry, to see her cry?
Christ's mother's misery at what
Christ must endure singes the human eye.
Who cannot feel the hurt
to contemplate her mourn
who contemplates the throes of her first-born?
Her nation hurried to commit
crime, and she sees Jesus tortured hard:
she saw Him flogged for it,
she saw His gashes; now she must regard
her own sweet Boy
in death's last desolation
gasping out His spirit for their nation.
Ah, Mother, make me feel!
Your never-drying cascade of burning
love: submit me to a real
grief; thaw out this heart with flames
of your great yearning
against the pain of Christ.
Truelove, true grief: with these
I hope my Christ, I hope my God to please.
Do this for me, do this,
O Mother mine, O holy Mother mine:
hammer those hammer-wounds of His
deep into this blank heart. Your pain combine
with me, your grief divide
with me: that pain which He,
Whom you once bore,
was pleased to bear for me:
Thus make me weep with you,
and share in love His sorrows while I live;
and let me keep with you
your station by His scaffold; let me give
the hanging Man my tears,
let me stand here, beneath
the Crucified, and join with your's my grief.
O Maid of maids,unclouded,
noon-bright Maid: to me be not severe,
drying my tears, but shrouded,
like you, in woe of Christ, let me be appear,
dressed in His death;
and ever let me find
His pangs and lacerations in my mind.
I want to wear His brands,
I want to be made drunk with cross, with blood
from feet and side and hands
of your dead Son; lest burning (and a flood
of fire now laps me round)
engulf when time is ended
and judgment sounds. By you be I defended.
And Christ! when falls my doom
that I must leave the world, and death must be
my body's lot: then let me come
through her, your Mother, into victory.
When agony is done,
bid my true self to rise
into the stellar glow of Paradise.
