 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere
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XI.
ON A PORTRAIT.
A deep still Sorrow, beautiful and bland,
Across those brooding brows and eastern eyes
Rests, as a broad shade on the mountain lies:
How few that Sorrow's cause shall understand!
Methinks, the years to come, a tragic band,
Move, heard by him, with funeral harmonies,
Up life's dim vale: and prescience, vainly wise,
Shadows a fair face with prophetic hand.
'Tis but a picture:—Stranger, grief-betrayed,
Weep not! The man, not portrait, hadst thou seen,
For early death then justly hadst thou prayed
To shield the mourner with the grave's kind screen
From woes, his portion destined from his birth,—
O noble souls, what do ye here on earth?
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere
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