Is it strange to call it my Portrait?
Nay, smile, dear, for well you may,
To think of that radiant Vision
And of what I am to-day.
With restless, yet confident longing
How those blue eyes seem to gaze
Into deep and exhaustless Treasures,
All hid in the coming days.
With that trust which leans on the Future,
And counts on her promised store,
Until she has taught us to tremble
And hope,—but to trust no more.
How that young, light heart would have pitied
Me now—if her dreams had shown
A quiet and weary woman
With all her illusions flown.
Yet I—who shall soon be resting,
And have passed the hardest part,
Can look back with a deeper pity
On that young unconscious heart.
It is strange; but Life’s currents drift us
So surely and swiftly on,
That we scarcely notice the changes,
And how many things are gone:
And forget, while to-day absorbs us,
How old mysteries are unsealed;
How the old, old ties are loosened,
And the old, old wounds are healed.
And we say that our Life is fleeting
Like a story that Time has told;
But we fancy that we—we only
Are just what we were of old.
So now and then it is wisdom
To gaze, as I do to-day,
At a half-forgotten relic
Of a Time that is passed away.
The very look of that Portrait,
The Perfume that seems to cling
To those fragile and faded letters,
And the Locket, and the Ring,