Impartiality - Kostenloses Hörbuch

RAPHAEL

                    I shall 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?

                    O no!—We live our life again
                      Or warmly touched, or coldly dim,
                    The pictures of the Past remain,—
                      Man's works shall follow him!