Let us depart!

ON A PICTURE OF CHRIST BEARING THE CROSS.

PAINTED BY VELASQUEZ.[430]

By the dark stillness brooding in the sky,

Holiest of sufferers! round thy path of woe,

And by the weight of mortal agony

Laid on thy drooping form and pale meek brow,

My heart was awed: the burden of thy pain

Sank on me with a mystery and a chain.

I look’d once more—and, as the virtue shed