Sonnets To A Picture: I Poem by Alexander Anderson

He sleeps; the inner agony hath pass'd
With the sure dawn that slowly climbs the east;
The night wherein man saw Him not hath ceas'd,
And sleep is on that glorious face at last.
But pain still lingers there, though faint and worn,
Upon the grandest of all brows, whereon
It makes its latest stand to be o'erthrown,
By the sunrise of Love's eternal morn.
It is no painter's touch! beneath those eyes
The mission and the Cross rise slowly up;
Death with them with the dregs that He must sup,
And sorrow with her choruses of sighs.
And over all a halo from above,
God's Signet on His Masterpiece of Love.