Then He said: "It is finished. Father, into Your Hands, I commit My Spirit", and, with muffled, departing breath,

Silently slipped from the Roman Cross into the clutch of Death,

Just as Death itself took hold, He rent the bony grasp! And journeyed into the Heart of the Earth, far beneath the depths of the Western bay,

Where swinging wide, at Hell's Gates lay,

Demons and Dogs, guards of their False lord:

A phantom Legion, with, in every hand, an implement of Demise and War.

When, from the Highest Heights, descended The Son, Across Hell's fiery sky, like the shadows of a prison-bar,

In His Almighty form, was magnified,

By His own Godly reflection in the Ever-Freezing Tide.

Meanwhile, each Soul born before His Coming, through constant Torture and Fire,

Gazes upwards in wonder and watches with eager ears,

Until, in the hot silence around them they hear

The knock of Christ at the Obsidian Doors,

The distress of Demons, and the footsteps of Salvation,

And the measured tread of Christ Himself

Marching down a beam of Light onto Hell's Plutonian shore.

You Know the rest. In rope-bound leather you have Read of it, and well,

How the Devil was vanquished and, humbled, fled:

How the Dead were Saved, and raised up to beyond the Firmament,

Out of Death's own grip, which held them for Epochs long, behind Pandemonium's stout-guarded wall,

Following the Son of God back up the Pearly Stair,

Then crossing the skies, to emerge again,

Under the rosy clouds of Heaven's realms,

And only pausing to weigh their Sin.

So, for Three Days, in Death, Christ Harrowed Hell;

And so, through the darkness of Three Nights, of Mourning on Earth, went His Word to the Lower Regions of the Earth,

To every Fallen Soul back to Our Father the First, Adam in Eden:

A cry of Righteous Defiance, and not of Mortal Fear,

A Voice in the Blackness, a firm knock at Hell's door,

And a True Word, that shall echo up to the Heavens, forever-more!

For, carried along the night-wind of the distant Past,

Through all of our history, to the West's final gasp,

In that Hour of Darkness, and of Hopeless Peril, and in that Time of Great Need,

The Living Righteous will awaken, and listen long for to hear:

The hurrying tread of those Godly feet,

And the Living Word of Jesus Christ, Our Lord.