I am the cross of Christ!

I bore His body there

On Calvary's lonely hill

Till then I was a humble tree

That grew beside a tiny rill;

I think till then

I was a thing despised of men!

I am the cross of Christ!

I grew, sapped the water

From that little stream;

I loved the sun and heard the winds

And dreamed my humble dream.

And thus it was until

They took me to that pain--hurt hill.

I am the cross of Christ!

I felt His limbs along

My common, broken bark;

I saw His utter loneliness,

The lightning and the dark;

And up till then

I thought He was as older men.

I am the cross of Christ!

I crown the pointed spires

Of man--made temples near and far.

I watch the rising and the setting

Of each far--flung star;

All through the night I am

Eternal sentinel for man!

I am the cross of Christ!

On my form they used to crucify

The outcasts of the earth;

But on that lonely hill that day

My kind received, in blood, new birth,

And ever till this day

A weary world bows at my feet to pray!

I am the cross of Christ!

They say I tower " o'er the wrecks

Of time." I only know

That once a humble tree

This was not so. But this

I know--since then

I have become a symbol for the hopes of men.