Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PORTRAIT; SONNET, by JOHN GODFREY SAXE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PORTRAIT; SONNET, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: A pretty picture hangs before my view
Last Line: Such very sunshine to a northern heart!
Subject(s): Beauty


A PRETTY picture hangs before my view;
The face, in little, of a Southern dame,
To me unknown (though not unknown to fame)
Save by the lines the cunning limner drew.
So grandly Grecian is the lady's head,
I took her for Minerva in disguise;
But when I marked the winning lips and eyes,
I thought of Aphrodite, in her stead;
And then I kissed her calm, unanswering mouth
(The picture's mine) as any lover might,
In the deep fervor of a nuptial night,
And envied him who, in the "Sunny South,"
Calls her his own whose shadow can impart
Such very sunshine to a Northern heart!





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