II.
The description of the
Virgin and Child sleeping between the paws of the
statue is derived from a picture by M. Olivier
Mersson, now in the large gallery built and filled
with works of the French school by Mr. Duncan
of Benmore, near Kilmun, on the Clyde.
The poet old we still revere,
Passed to sing of sword and spear.
In a long thereafter year,
The holy Child, as Scriptures say,
Into Egypt fled away
To find repose a year and day:
And in the night,
Beneath the saffron-hued moonlight,
Against the saffron-coloured sky,
The Sphynx stood their steps too to greet:
And Mary, with the Child divine,
Slept between its mighty feet,
Sheltered there as in a shrine;
Behold, the light
From out the Child, the Child divine,
Shone up into the vast wide eyes,
And made the arching eyelids bright
Against the darkening midnight skies.
