Doxology for Ares

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?





They married beneath the linden tree
In the lower south forty-four,
She stood a stoic in her second day dress
As her soldier went off to the war.

O Yes she was washed but he was
bathed and baptized
bathed as he lay in the blood of his comrades
baptized in the blood of his brothers at arms
white blood black blood blue blood grey
no distinction
corpuscles mingled in fearful miscegenation
rivulets flowed into rivers
He was Washed in the Blood of the Lamb.

They laid him beneath the linden tree
In the lower south forty-four,
She stood dry-eyed as she bid him good-bye
Her soldier come home from the war.

Twenty years gone and
a thousand Sunday mornings spent
musing on the meaning of his life
questioning his death
days were her mind would revisit
the conflagration and the green
of the overgrown grass would jeer at her barren heart
while cornflowers mocked the memory
of his blue eyes.

He pledged her his life and days when
the worst came upon her
she envied the ancient Baucis
standing guard beside her groom
her linden roots enfolding bones and blood
absorbing death creating life
So two Shall be One.

She should have found her rest there
Beneath the linden tree,
When they buried her heart in a plain pine box
Gettysburg ‘63.

When the Bridegroom cometh will your robes be white?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Will your soul be ready for the mansions bright?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

(Are You Washed In the Blood, c. Elisha A. Hoffman 1878)
(Image: Geneviève de Nangis-Regnault, published in Paris, 1774 - 1780 as "La Botanique")