| |
| LONG has the summer sunlight shone | |
| On the fair form, the quaint costume; | |
| Yet, nameless still, she sits, unknown, | |
| A lady in her youthful bloom. | |
| |
| Fairer for this! no shadows cast | 5 |
| Their blight upon her perfect lot, | |
| Whate’er her future or her past | |
| In this bright moment matters not. | |
| |
| No record of her high descent | |
| There needs, nor memory of her name; | 10 |
| Enough that Raphael’s colors blent | |
| To give her features deathless fame! | |
| |
| ’T was his anointing hand that set | |
| The crown of beauty on her brow; | |
| Still lives its early radiance yet, | 15 |
| As at the earliest, even now. | |
| |
| ’T is not the ecstasy that glows | |
| In all the rapt Cecilia’s grace; | |
| Nor yet the holy, calm repose | |
| He painted on the Virgin’s face. | 20 |
| |
| Less of the heavens, and more of earth, | |
| There lurk within these earnest eyes, | |
| The passions that have had their birth | |
| And grown beneath Italian skies. | |
| |
| What mortal thoughts, and cares, and dreams, | 25 |
| What hopes, and fears, and longings rest | |
| Where falls the folded veil, or gleams | |
| The golden necklace on her breast! | |
| |
| What mockery of the painted glow | |
| May shade the secret soul within; | 30 |
| What griefs from passion’s overflow, | |
| What shame that follows after sin! | |
| |
| Yet calm as heaven’s serenest deeps | |
| Are those pure eyes, those glances pure; | |
| And queenly is the state she keeps, | 35 |
| In beauty’s lofty trust secure. | |
| |
| And who has strayed, by happy chance, | |
| Through all those grand and pictured halls, | |
| Nor felt the magic of her glance, | |
| As when a voice of music calls? | 40 |
| |
| Not soon shall I forget the day,— | |
| Sweet day, in spring’s unclouded time, | |
| While on the glowing canvas lay | |
| The light of that delicious clime,— | |
| |
| I marked the matchless colors wreathed | 45 |
| On the fair brow, the peerless cheek; | |
| The lips, I fancied, almost breathed | |
| The blessings that they could not speak. | |
| |
| Fair were the eyes with mine that bent | |
| Upon the picture their mild gaze, | 50 |
| And dear the voice that gave consent | |
| To all the utterance of my praise. | |
| |
| O fit companionship of thought; | |
| O happy memories, shrined apart; | |
| The rapture that the painter wrought, | 55 |
| The kindred rapture of the heart! | |
| |
