Just serves to show how delicate a soil
The golden harvest grows in; and those eyes, Soft and capacious as a cloudless sky
Whose azure depth their colour emulates, Must needs be conversant with upward looks, Prayer's voiceless service; but now, seeking nought And shunning nought, their own peculiar life Of motion they renounce, and with the head Partake its inclination towards earth
In humble grace, and quiet pensiveness Caught at the point where it stops short of sadness. Offspring of soul-bewitching Art, make me Thy confidant! say, whence derived that air Of calm abstraction? Can the ruling thought Be with some lover far away, or one
Crossed by misfortune, or of doubted faith? Inapt conjecture! Childhood here, a moon Crescent in simple loveliness serene, Has but approached the gates of womanhood, Not entered them; her heart is yet unpierced By the blind Archer-god; her fancy free: The fount of feeling if unsought elsewhere, Will not be found.
Her right hand, as it lies Across the slender wrist of the left arm Upon her lap reposing, holds-but mark How slackly, for the absent mind permits No firmer grasp a little wild-flower, joined As in a posy, with a few pale ears
Of yellowing corn, the same that overtopped And in their common birthplace sheltered it 'Till they were plucked together; a blue flower Called by the thrifty husbandman a weed;
But Ceres, in her garland, might have worn That ornament, unblamed. The floweret, held In scarcely conscious fingers, was, she knows, (Her Father told her so) in youth's gay dawn Her Mother's favourite; and the orphan Girl, In her own dawn-a dawn less gay and bright, Loves it, while there in solitary peace She sits, for that departed Mother's sake. -Not from a source less sacred is derived (Surely I do not err) that pensive air Of calm abstraction through the face diffused And the whole person.
Words have something told
More than the pencil can, and verily
More than is needed, but the precious Art Forgives their interference-Art divine, That both creates and fixes, in despite
Of Death and Time, the marvels it hath wrought. Strange contrasts have we in this world of ours! That posture, and the look of filial love Thinking of past and gone, with what is left Dearly united, might be swept away From this fair Portrait's fleshly Archetype, Even by an innocent fancy's slightest freak Banished, nor ever, haply, be restored To their lost place, or meet in harmony So exquisite; but here do they abide, Enshrined for ages. Is not then the Art Godlike, a humble branch of the divine,
In visible quest of immortality,
Stretched forth with trembling hope ?-In every realm, From high Gibraltar to Siberian plains,
Thousands, in each variety of tongue
That Europe knows, would echo this appeal; One above all, a Monk who waits on God In the magnific Convent built of yore To sanctify the Escurial palace. He- Guiding, from cell to cell and room to room, A British Painter (eminent for truth
In character, and depth of feeling, shown By labours that have touched the hearts of kings, And are endeared to simple cottagers)- Came, in that service, to a glorious work,
Our Lord's Last Supper, beautiful as when first The appropriate Picture, fresh from Titian's hand, Graced the Refectory: and there, while both Stood with eyes fixed upon that masterpiece, The hoary Father in the Stranger's ear
Breathed out these words:- "Here daily do we sit, Thanks given to God for daily bread, and here Pondering the mischiefs of these restless times, And thinking of my Brethren, dead, dispersed, Or changed and changing, I not seldom gaze Upon this solemn Company unmoved By shock of circumstance, or lapse of years, Until I cannot but believe that they—
They are in truth the Substance, we the Shadows." So spake the mild Jeronymite, his griefs
Melting away within him like a dream Ere he had ceased to gaze, perhaps to speak: And I, grown old, but in a happier land, Domestic Portrait! have to verse consigned In thy calm presence those heart-moving words: Words that can soothe, more than they agitate; Whose spirit, like the angel that went down Into Bethesda's pool, with healing virtue
Informs the fountain in the human breast Which by the visitation was disturbed. --But why this stealing tear? Companion mute, On thee I look, not sorrowing; fare thee well, My Song's Inspirer, once again farewell!*
THE FOREGOING SUBJECT RESUMED.
AMONG a grave fraternity of Monks, For One, but surely not for One alone, Triumphs, in that great work, the Painter's skill, Humbling the body, to exalt the soul; Yet representing, amid wreck and wrong And dissolution and decay, the warm And breathing life of flesh, as if already Clothed with impassive majesty, and graced With no mean earnest of a heritage
Assigned to it in future worlds. Thou, too, With thy memorial flower, meek Portraiture! From whose serene companionship I passed
Pursued by thoughts that haunt me still; thou also- Though but a simple object, into light
Called forth by those affections that endear
The private hearth; though keeping thy sole seat In singleness, and little tried by time, Creation, as it were, of yesterday—
* The pile of buildings, composing the palace and convent of San Lorenzo, has, in common usage, lost its proper name in that of the Escurial, a village at the foot of the hill upon which the splendid edifice, built by Philip the Second, stands. It need scarcely be added, that Wilkie is the painter alluded to.
With a congenial function art endued For each and all of us, together joined In course of nature under a low roof By charities and duties that proceed Out of the bosom of a wiser vow. To a like salutary sense of awe
Or sacred wonder, growing with the power Of meditation that attempts to weigh,
In faithful scales, things and their opposites, Can thy enduring quiet gently raise
A household small and sensitive,-whose love, Dependent as in part its blessings are Upon frail ties dissolving or dissolved
On earth, will be revived, we trust, in heaven. *
So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive,
Would that the little Flowers were born to live, Conscious of half the pleasure which they give;
That to this mountain-daisy's self were known The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown On the smooth surface of this naked stone!
* In the class entitled "Musings," in Mr. Southey's Minor Poems, is one upon his own miniature Picture, taken in childhood, and another upon a landscape painted by Gaspar Poussin. It is possible that every word of the above verses, though similar in subject, might have been written had the author been unacquainted with those beautiful effusions of poetic sentiment. But, for his own satisfaction, he must be allowed thus publicly to acknowledge the pleasure those two Poems of his Friend have given him, and the grateful influence they have upon his mind as often as he reads them, or thinks of them.
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