ONE morning of a summer's day, Upon a painter's easel lay The picture of a child at play: A form of laughing life and grace, And finished all except the place Left empty for the untouched face. In nodding violets, half asleep, The dancing feet were ankle deep: One rounded arm was heaping up With clover-bloom and buttercup; The other tossed a blossom high To lure a wandering butterfly. 'T was easy to imagine there In that round frame of rippling hair The wanting face, all bright and fair. A sadder artist came that day, Looked at the picture where it lay, And, sitting in the painter's place, He painted in the missing face. From his own heart the lines he took -- Lo! what a wan and woeful look! Under the mocking wreath of flowers, A brow worn old with weary hours: A face, once seen, one still must see; Wise, awful-eyed solemnity, Lips long ago too tired to hide The torture-lines where love had died; The look of a despair too late, Too dead even to be desperate; A face for which so far away The struggle and the protest lay, No memory of it more could stay. Repulsed and reckless, withered, wild, It stared above the dancing child. At night a musing poet came And, shuddering, wrote beneath its name. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...VANQUISHED; ON THE DEATH OF GENERAL GRANT by FRANCIS FISHER BROWNE SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE: 27 by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING ODE TO SIMPLICITY by WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759) THE LONG WHITE SEAM by JEAN INGELOW EPITAPH ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATIC POET, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE by JOHN MILTON A TURKISH LEGEND by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH |