VALENTINE.
TO A FAIR ARTISTE.
Written in 1813.
[_]
These, if not the first verses that I ever wrote, are the first with
which I succeeded in pleasing even myself:—in fact, the first in which
I was able to express a preconceived thought in metre. I have
selected them from a mass of juvenile, or more properly, puerile
poetry, not as any better, or much worse, than the rest, but from the
pleasant associations connected with them. It will do nobody any
harm, and to some may be an agreeable remembrancer of old times.
The young lady to whom it was addressed is the eldest daughter of
the late William Green, an artist of great merit, who possessed a true
sense of the beautiful in nature. The lady is now a wife and mother,
and probably regards the pictorial skill of her youth, and the compliments
it may have gained her, as things that have been.
O, mistress of that lovely art
Which can to shadows form impart—
Can fix those evanescent tints,
Fainter by far than lovers' hints,
And bring the scenes we love to mind,
When we have left them far behind,—
Thou seest an image in thy glass
Which does e'en Raphael's art surpass,
But which Dan Cupid has been able
To copy in my heart's soft table.
How proud 'twould make a connoisseur
To have so beauteous a picture!
For me, I own, it ill contents me;
To have a copy but torments me,
Unless I might possess, as well,
That copy's fair original.