THE PAINTER'S LAST PASSION.
A hectic hue is on my feverish cheek,
And slowly throbs my pulse—but it will cease;
And cease, too, will the visions instinct,
Impalpable, and deep, that haunt my soul!
Death, who can dash the chalice from the lips
Of Pleasure's votary, and hush the lyre
While poetry is breathing on its strings;
Death, who can quench the spirit which portrays
Beauty's resemblance on the marble urn,
Will steep my feelings in oblivion's gloom,
Ere wintry winds disperse the sunny leaves
That cluster round the bosom of the rose.
But I have communed with enchanting shapes,
And felt the silver gush of many a song
Amid the air, until my spirit seem'd
Instinct with glorious draughts of paradise!
Mine eyes have scarcely closed their burning lids
For many a night; and I have watch'd the stars
That smiled upon me from the brow of heaven,
Like deep blue orbs familiar to my youth;
But now abstraction clouds me, and the fire—
Ambition's fire—it can be nothing less—
Deserts its lonely shrine; but I must give
The last bright touch to this bewitching form,
This pictured rainbow of my solitude!
I have invested her with loveliness
More pure than beings of the earth assume,
And Memory calls her beauteous image back
From the forgotten things of distant years,
Warm, eloquent, and holy, as the balm
Of flow'rs impearl'd with dew, which summer skies
Diffuse around—I mark the marble brow
Of polish'd symmetry, the eyes more blue
Than violets in their vernal bloom, the neck
Swanlike, and moulded with ethereal grace;
And feel their magic influence on my mind.
I will embody them, and give the stamp
Of fervid genius to their various charms,
Ere this last aspiration is extinct
In the unbroken slumbers of the tomb!
For I have had prophetic monitors
To warn me of my fate, and I must leave
All that is lovely in this lovely world.
It is a summer eve—the sunbeams tinge
The glassy bosom of the quiet lake;
The music of the birds enchants the air,
And Nature's verdant robe is gemm'd with flow'rs.
From which the breeze derives its liquid balm.
Oh! in my youth, this hour has been to me
Bright as the fairy arch upon the clouds
Of earthly grief and gloom, and even now
It gives the silent fountain of my heart
A renovated action, and recalls
The energies that long ago were mine.
My fancy wanders as I thus portray
The lineaments on which 'tis bliss to gaze:
How beautiful their prototype! to whom
I breath'd in youth the most impassion'd words,
And felt as if Elysium had disclosed
Its glory to my eye—around this brow,
Stainless as marble, cluster golden curls
Like sunbeams on the bosom of the cloud,
And o'er the radiant azure orbs beneath,
The snowy lids suspend their glossy fringe.
Upon such beauty shall my pencil stamp
Its immortality, and make it seem
More beautiful in Fancy's softest glow;
And, my beloved! when this warm hand that traced
Thy pictured charms is mouldering in the dust,
Thou wilt proclaim the painter's mastery,
And consecrate the canvass with a power
Which shall defy the wasting hand of Time!
G.R.C.