TO A REMEMBERED PICTURE.
[She was singularly impressed by the picture at Holyrood House, shown as that of Rizzio. The authenticity of this designation is more than doubtful; but hers was not a mind for question or cavil on points of this nature. The “local habitation and the name” were in themselves sufficient to awaken her fancy, and to satisfy her faith. As Rizzio’s portrait, it took its place in her imagination; and the train of deep and mournful thoughts it suggested, imbued, as was her wont, with the colouring of her own individual feelings, was embodied in the lines “To a Remembered Picture.”—Memoir, p. 197-8.]
They haunt me still—those calm, pure, holy eyes!
Their piercing sweetness wanders through my dreams;
The soul of music that within them lies
Comes o’er my soul in soft and sudden gleams:
Life—spirit-life—immortal and divine—
Is there; and yet how dark a death was thine!
Could it—oh! could it be—meek child of song?
The might of gentleness on that fair brow—
Was the celestial gift no shield from wrong?
Bore it no talisman to ward the blow?
Ask if a flower, upon the billows cast,
Might brave their strife—a flute-note hush the blast!
Are there not deep, sad oracles to read
In the clear stillness of that radiant face?
Yes! even like thee must gifted spirits bleed,
Thrown on a world, for heavenly things no place!
Bright, exiled birds that visit alien skies,
Pouring on storms their suppliant melodies.
And seeking ever some true, gentle breast,
Whereon their trembling plumage might repose,
And their free song-notes, from that happy nest,
Gush as a fount that forth from sunlight flows:
Vain dream!—the love whose precious balms might save
Still, still denied—they struggle to the grave.
Yet my heart shall not sink!—another doom,
Victim! hath set its promise in thine eye:
A light is there, too quenchless for the tomb,
Bright earnest of a nobler destiny;
Telling of answers, in some far-off sphere,
To the deep souls that find no echo here.