Poems of Nature, part 3, Reminiscent Poems | Page 2

not soon forget that sight
The glow of Autumn's westering day,

A hazy warmth, a dreamy light,
On Raphael's picture lay.
It was a simple print I saw,
The fair face of a musing boy;
Yet,
while I gazed, a sense of awe
Seemed blending with my joy.
A simple print,--the graceful flow
Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair,

And fresh young lip and cheek, and brow
Unmarked and clear,
were there.
Yet through its sweet and calm repose
I saw the inward spirit shine;

It was as if before me rose
The white veil of a shrine.
As if, as Gothland's sage has told,
The hidden life, the man within,

Dissevered from its frame and mould,
By mortal eye were seen.
Was it the lifting of that eye,
The waving of that pictured hand?

Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky,
I saw the walls expand.

The narrow room had vanished,--space,
Broad, luminous, remained
alone,
Through which all hues and shapes of grace
And beauty
looked or shone.
Around the mighty master came
The marvels which his pencil
wrought,
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human
thought.
There drooped thy more than mortal face,
O Mother, beautiful and
mild
Enfolding in one dear embrace
Thy Saviour and thy Child!
The rapt brow of the Desert John;
The awful glory of that day

When all the Father's brightness shone
Through manhood's veil of
clay.
And, midst gray prophet forms, and wild
Dark visions of the days of
old,
How sweetly woman's beauty smiled
Through locks of brown
and gold!
There Fornarina's fair young face
Once more upon her lover shone,

Whose model of an angel's grace
He borrowed from her own.
Slow passed that vision from my view,
But not the lesson which it
taught;
The soft, calm shadows which it threw
Still rested on my
thought:
The truth, that painter, bard, and sage,
Even in Earth's cold and
changeful clime,
Plant for their deathless heritage
The fruits and
flowers of time.
We shape ourselves the joy or fear
Of which the coming life is made,

And fill our Future's atmosphere
With sunshine or with shade.
The tissue of the Life to be
We weave with colors all our own,
And
in the field of Destiny
We reap as we have sown.

Still shall the soul around it call
The shadows which it gathered here,

And, painted on the eternal wall,
The Past shall reappear.
Think ye the notes of holy song
On Milton's tuneful ear have died?

Think ye that Raphael's angel throng
Has vanished from his side?
Oh no!--We live our life again;
Or warmly touched, or coldly dim,

The pictures of the Past remain,---
Man's works shall follow him!

1842.
EGO.
WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF A FRIEND.
On page of thine I cannot trace
The cold and heartless commonplace,

A statue's fixed and marble grace.
For ever as these lines I penned,
Still with the thought of thee will
blend
That of some loved and common friend,
Who in life's desert track has made
His pilgrim tent with mine, or
strayed
Beneath the same remembered shade.
And hence my pen unfettered moves
In freedom which the heart
approves,
The negligence which friendship loves.
And wilt thou prize my poor gift less
For simple air and rustic dress,

And sign of haste and carelessness?
Oh, more than specious counterfeit
Of sentiment or studied wit,
A
heart like thine should value it.
Yet half I fear my gift will be
Unto thy book, if not to thee,
Of more
than doubtful courtesy.
A banished name from Fashion's sphere,
A lay unheard of Beauty's

ear,
Forbid, disowned,--what do they here?
Upon my ear not all in vain
Came the sad captive's clanking chain,

The groaning from his bed of pain.
And sadder still, I saw the woe
Which only wounded spirits know

When Pride's strong footsteps o'er them go.
Spurned not alone in walks abroad,
But from the temples of the Lord

Thrust out apart, like things abhorred.
Deep as I felt, and stern and strong,
In words which Prudence
smothered long,
My soul spoke out against the wrong;
Not mine alone the task to speak
Of comfort to the poor and weak,

And dry the tear on Sorrow's cheek;
But, mingled in the conflict warm,
To pour the fiery breath of storm

Through the harsh trumpet of Reform;
To brave Opinion's settled frown,
From ermined robe and saintly
gown,
While wrestling reverenced Error down.
Founts gushed beside my pilgrim way,
Cool shadows on the
greensward lay,
Flowers swung upon the bending spray.
And, broad and bright, on either hand,
Stretched the green slopes of
Fairy-land,
With Hope's eternal sunbow spanned;
Whence voices called me like the flow,
Which on the listener's ear
will grow,
Of forest streamlets soft and low.
And gentle eyes, which still retain
Their picture on the heart and
brain,
Smiled, beckoning from that path of pain.
In vain! nor dream, nor rest, nor pause
Remain for him who round

him draws
The battered mail of Freedom's cause.
From youthful hopes, from each green spot
Of young Romance, and
gentle Thought,
Where storm and tumult enter not;
From each fair altar, where belong
The offerings Love requires of
Song
In homage to her bright-eyed throng;
With soul and strength, with heart and hand,
I turned to Freedom's
struggling band,
To the sad Helots of our land.
What marvel then that