University of Virginia Library

Then to the panels roved my eye,
In search of better company,
And asked those paintings, nobly wrought,
To tell me their creator's thought;
Then those pictures dim and grey
Led my fancy far away.
Steel-clad knights, and bodiced dames
Leaning thro' their stately frames,
With their cold, eternal gaze
From the depth of other days.

That stern, time-clouded race between
A shape of life and light is seen;
Cherub-lips and angel-eyes—
A paradise of smiles and sighs.
But why that tone
Of sorrow thrown
O'er features made for joy alone?—

She was a child, and he was a child;
What was ever too young or too old for love?
But she was rich, and he was poor;
What was ever too high or too bold for love?
And their love with their growth unconsciously grew,
Till her kinsmen saw what themselves scarce knew.
They were parted from that hour;
He perished soon in a stranger land;
They gave her no line from his faithful hand,
And forced her to walk with the young and gay,
As slowly, slowly, she died away.
But love has faith tho' hate has power:
That was the balm of the folding flower.
And oft, in midnight's mystic gloom,
Her lover comes from his foreign tomb,
And prays the God of day and night
To send one beam of kind moonlight
On the pictured wall of that hallowed room
Then breathes a sigh, so sad and deep
The household hear it in their sleep,
And flits back lonely to his doom.

Slowly I turned from the face divine
Of that buried rose of a ruined line,
To where a canvas lured my eye
From the narrow room and the clouded sky,
Away and away, to Italy!
With its crested ripples sparkling;
And its watery furrows darkling;
And its white sail like a swallow
Darting over the hollow;
And its sun intensely bright;
And its sea intensely blue;
And its crowds of lazy nations,
With nothing on earth to do;
And its old cyclopean ruins,—
Dust of empires dead,—
Footprints of the giants,
In which the pigmies tread;
And its white-domed cities lying
With the faintest veil of haze,
Like a dream of boyhood visioned
By the light of later days.
And its olive-leaf scarce trembling,
And its sky so pure and still;
Not a frown from earth to zenith,
Save one small cloud on the hill.
The olive-leaf scarce trembling—
The cloud so small and fair;
Just enough to say—the spirit
Of a storm is watching there!
Thro' the forest's leafy masses
You might see how the current ran,
As a thought in whispers passes
Thro' the myriad tribes of man;
And the cloud, like Jupiter's eagle
Looking down on his old Rome,
Perched waiting on his mountain
Till the thunder-day shall come.—
A Laurel in the foreground,
Lone and withering,
For ever stands expectant
Of its unreturning spring;
And a painter lies beneath it,
With his brush and palette near,
Catching Truth's white inspiration,
Like light in a prism clear,
And throwing it back in Fancy's
Rich-tinted atmosphere.

An army's homeward march
Crowds up yon glorious arch,
While, towering in victorious might,
Centring all the picture's light,
The veteran Leaders wait
The elders of the state:
For down the far-seen road
A joyous throng have flowed;
Some on wings of hope and fear,
In search of the loved and near,
Have flown on in advance:
Their eyes despairing cast
Thro' the thick ranks mounting fast,
Seeing none
Till they see the one,
And fly to rest
On his faithful breast:
Weeks in palsying terror sped,
Nights of agony, days of dread,
Racking hours that weigh like years,
Thousand thoughts, and hopes, and fears
All summed in a single moment,
And told in a single glance.

And, through that living surge,
The battle's wrecks emerge:
Slowly their comrades bear them
To the graves the loved prepare them,
But they join the triumph they gave
To the city they died to save!
And, where that solemn line draws near,
Silent sinks the exulting cheer,
And inward drops the chidden tear;
The ground shall drink it never;
It shall lie on the heart for ever;
And all around they keep
A reverent silence deep,
For they think it sin to weep.

And as I wondered still
At the painter's matchless skill,
That work of buried genius,
With its mingled light and shade,
And its beauty's silent magic,
This tale of eld conveyed: