Song of the Day - 17th April

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day before Good Friday, the day when Christians commemorate the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples.

The three Synoptic Gospels and the First Epistle to the Corinthians include the account of the institution of the Eucharist in which Jesus takes bread, breaks it and gives it to those present, saying "This is my body given to you". The Gospel of John tells of Jesus washing the feet of the apostles, giving the new commandment "to love one another as I have loved you". The word Maundy is the name of the Christian rite of foot-washing, memorialising the act of Jesus.

     "It's beautiful."
        ~ Cathures Chamber Choir

Today's song is a setting of a poem called Maundy Thursday by Christina Rossetti.

In this poem, Christ is described metaphorically as a Great Vine leaving the glory of Heaven to reign as Forest King, to be met with resistance from the proud unbending forest trees, representing mankind who claim that "Not we were born to curve and droop, not we to climb and cling". 

Jesus describes Himself as a vine in a parable he told to the disciples at the Last Supper: "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."

This song is being beta tested by my friends at Cathures Chamber Choir. It will be sung at their summer concert on Tue 17th June 2025, 8:00pm at Kelvinside Hillhead Parish Church, Glasgow, G12 9AR as part of WestFest, Glasgow's biggest cultural and community festival.

Maundy Thursday

By Christina Georgina Rossetti

The great Vine left its glory to reign as Forest King.

'Nay,' quoth the lofty forest trees, 'we will not have this thing;

We will not have this supple one enring us with its ring.

Lo from immemorial time our might towers shadowing:

Not we were born to curve and droop, not we to climb and cling:

We buffet back the buffeting wind, tough to its buffeting:

We screen great beasts, the wild fowl build in our heads and sing,

Every bird of every feather from off our tops takes wing:

I a king, and thou a king, and what king shall be our king?'

Nevertheless the great Vine stooped to be the Forest King,

While the forest swayed and murmured like seas that are tempesting:

Stooped and drooped with thousand tendrils in thirsty languishing;

Bowed to earth and lay on earth for earth's replenishing;

Put off sweetness, tasted bitterness, endured time's fashioning;

Put off life and put on death: -- and lo it was all to bring

All its fellows down to a death which hath lost the sting,

All its fellows up to a life in endless triumphing, --

I a king, and thou a king, and this King to be our King.