Volume 19 — Sonnet: Good Friday.

Behold the highest Good! there on the cross

'Tis pictured on a canvas so sublime

That God's own thought, conceived before all time,

Is fitly told; the universe at loss

To fathom it, its mighty forces toss

In darkened struggles that do wildly chime

In thund'rous mutt'rings with the monstrous crime

That man conceives; yet all the varied dross

Of nature's agitations but compose

The adjuncts to that central Form, where God,

Enthroned in pain, all suffering doth enclose

In one brief day, that never might be trod

A path more hard than that did interpose

'Twixt Pilate's hall and Calvary's blood-stained sod.

[pg 068]