Throned upon the Awful Tree

1. Throned upon the awful tree,
King of grief, I watch with thee.
Darkness veils thine anguished face:
None its lines of woe can trace:
None can tell what pangs unknown
Hold thee silent and alone.

2. Silent through those three dread hours,
Wrestling with the evil pow’rs,
Left alone with human sin,
Gloom around thee and within,
’Till th’appointed time is nigh,
’Till the Lamb of God may die.

3. Hark, that cry that peals aloud
Upward thro’ the whelming cloud!
Thou, the Father’s only Son,
Thou, his own Anointed One,
Thou dost ask him—can it be?
“Why hast thou forsaken me?”

4. Lord, should fear and anguish roll
Darkly o’er my sinful soul,
Thou, who once wast thus bereft
That thine own might ne’er be left,
Teach me by that bitter cry
In the gloom to know thee nigh.

John Ellerton wrote “Throned upon the awful tree” in 1875, 7s. meter in six lines. It is Hymn 118 in the 1875 edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern, paired with the tune Gethsemane. The hymn appears as No. 345 in the Trinity Psalter Hymnal (2018), with Arfon or Tros y Garreg (a Welsh minor mode folk tune).

John Ellerton was born in London, England in 1826. He was educated at King William's College and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, England, He was ordained a minister of the Church of England. Ellerton died Torquay, Devonshire, England in 1893.