Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/34

20 and sway in fright as in a tempest, bending to the very ground and extending their heads to the Virgin with boundless entreaty.

Closed are Her lips, and sad is Her face. Again and again before Her rises the image of Him Whom human malice, envy, intolerance, cupidity and ambition sentenced to unbearable tortures and a shameful death. She sees Him,—beaten, bleeding, carrying upon His shoulders His heavy cross, and stumbling under its weight. Upon the dusty road She sees dark sprays, the drops of His divine blood. She sees His beautiful body, mutilated by torture, hanging by out-turned arms upon the cross, with protruding chest and bloody sweat upon His deathly-pale face. And again She hears His dreadful whisper, "I am thirsty!" And again, as then, a sword is plunged into the Mother's heart.

The sun rises, hidden beyond dark, heavy clouds. It burns in Heaven like an enormous red blot, the bloody conflagration of the world. And lifting up Her saddend eyes, the Holy Virgin asks timidly, Her voice trembling:

"O Lord! Where are the bounds of Thy great wrath?"

But relentless is the wrath of God, and none knows its bounds! And when, in grief and sorrow, the Holy Virgin lowers Her eyes again, She sees that the innocent cups of gentle flowers are filled with bloody dew.

1915.