| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XVIII. The Great Mystery
Sonnet: ‘The hand of Death lay heavy on her eyes’ | | By John Moultrie (1799–1874) |
| | | THE HAND of Death lay heavy on her eyes,— | |
| For weeks and weeks her vision had not borne | |
| To meet the tenderest light of eve or morn, | |
| To see the crescent moonbeam set or rise, | |
| Or palest twilight creep across the skies; | 5 |
| She lay in darkness, seemingly forlorn, | |
| With sharp and ceaseless anguish rack’d and torn, | |
| Yet calm with that one peace which never dies. | |
| Closed was, for her, the gate of visual sense, | |
| This world and all its beauty lost in night; | 10 |
| But the pure soul was all ablaze with light, | |
| And through that gloom she saw, with gaze intense, | |
| Celestial glories, hid from fleshly sight, | |
| And heard angelic voices call her hence. | | | | |
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