mong the silent companions in my study are the effigies of the four greatest geniuses of modern times in the realms of literature, art, music and war—a print of Shakespeare; one of Michael Angelo’s corrugated face with its broken nose; a bust of Beethoven, resembling a pouting lion; and a print of Napoleon at St. Helena, representing him dressed in a white duck suit, with a broad-brimmed straw hat, and sitting looking seaward, with those unfathomable eyes, a newspaper lying in his lap
Unhappy faces all except the first—his cheerful, probably because he has effected an arrangement with an otherwise idle person, named Bacon, to do all his work for him. But there is another portrait, at which I look oftener, the original of which probably takes more interest in me, but is unknown to every visitor to my study. I myself have not seen her in half a century
I call it simply
A PORTRAIT.
gentle face is ever in my room,
With features fine and melancholy eyes,
Though young, a little past life’s freshest bloom,
And always with air of sad surmise.
A great white cap almost conceals her hair,
A collar broad falls o’er her shoulders slender;
The fashion of a bygone age an air
Of quaintness to her simple garb doth render.
Those hazel eyes pursue me as I move
And seem to watch my busy toiling pen;
They hold me with an anxious yearning love,
As if she dwelt upon the earth again.
My mother’s portrait! fifty years ago,
When I was but a heedless happy boy,
The influence of her being ceased to flow,
And she laid down life’s burden and its joy.
And now as I sit pondering o’er my books,
So vainly seeking a receding rest,
I read the wonder in her steadfast looks:
“Is this my son who lay upon my breast?”
And when for me there is an end of time,
And this unsatisfying work is done,
If I shall meet thee in thy peaceful clime,
Young mother, wilt thou know thy gray-haired son?
here is one other work of art which adorns my library—a medallion by a dear friend of mine, an eminent sculptor, the story of which I will put into his mouth. He calls the face