Gabriel's Message

Wonderful new (to me,) hymn text, John Mason Neale, using it tomorrow in the prelude. (He is fast becoming one of my favorites)
Springing it unawares on my choir, but I set it to a tune they know, and the extra (time donated, I might add,) Sunday morning rehearsal makes it feasible.
Gabriel's Message appears, (for obvious reasons,) as an Advent hymn many places, including the Chabanel Psalter site, but Summit Choir Book judges it a Lenten hymn. (Although the verses in that volume that make it so fail to appear in many other sources.)
The verses about the paradox of death defeated by death, the fall occurring in Eden and events of our redemption beginning in Gethsemane, the tree of knowledge and the tree of the cross -- they are perfect for 1st Lent in cycle A.

He that comes despised shall reign;
He that cannot die, be slain;
Death by death its death shall gain:

Like, its like shall overthrow
By a tree prevailed the foe
From a tree shall healing grow

Man was lost a garden in,
In a garden, man shall win,
Woman's faith end woman's sin.

Weakness shall the strong confound;
By the hands, in grave clothes wound,
Adam's chains shall be unbound.