 | Sonnets |  |
25
THE SORROW OF SORROWS.
[_]
(In face of the Mater Dolorosa in the fresco of the Crucifixion, in the Chapter room, by the same.)
WOMAN, those hands are bare that were love's throne,
On alien props thy helpless arms are spread;
Thy hope is mocked at, and thy glory fled,
Thy labour nought; love could not make thine own
Him, who was of thy flesh and of thy bone;
By woman's tears is no man's doom withstead;
Prayer could not ransom that devoted head;
Grief cannot pierce death's silence with its moan.
On alien props thy helpless arms are spread;
Thy hope is mocked at, and thy glory fled,
Thy labour nought; love could not make thine own
Him, who was of thy flesh and of thy bone;
By woman's tears is no man's doom withstead;
Prayer could not ransom that devoted head;
Grief cannot pierce death's silence with its moan.
Thou—sainted mother of a son divine—
Whose lips are guarded by thy chastened will,
The blind, brute anguish marked thee with its sign
Before love crucified beheld thee still—
Indrawn—as one who travails with a birth,
Vast as the shadow which o'erwhelms the earth.
Whose lips are guarded by thy chastened will,
The blind, brute anguish marked thee with its sign
Before love crucified beheld thee still—
Indrawn—as one who travails with a birth,
Vast as the shadow which o'erwhelms the earth.
| Sonnets | |