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John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

Poems Subjective and Reminiscent

Raphael

  • Suggested by the portrait of Raphael, at the age of fifteen.


  • I SHALL not soon forget that sight:

    The glow of Autumn’s westering day,

    A hazy warmth, a dreamy light,

    On Raphael’s picture lay.

    It was a simple print I saw,

    The fair face of a musing boy;

    Yet, while I gazed, a sense of awe

    Seemed blending with my joy.

    A simple print,—the graceful flow

    Of boyhood’s soft and wavy hair,

    And fresh young lip and cheek, and brow

    Unmarked and clear, were there.

    Yet through its sweet and calm repose

    I saw the inward spirit shine;

    It was as if before me rose

    The white veil of a shrine.

    As if, as Gothland’s sage has told,

    The hidden life, the man within,

    Dissevered from its frame and mould,

    By mortal eye were seen.

    Was it the lifting of that eye,

    The waving of that pictured hand?

    Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky,

    I saw the walls expand.

    The narrow room had vanished,—space,

    Broad, luminous, remained alone,

    Through which all hues and shapes of grace

    And beauty looked or shone.

    Around the mighty master came

    The marvels which his pencil wrought,

    Those miracles of power whose fame

    Is wide as human thought.

    There drooped thy more than mortal face,

    O Mother, beautiful and mild!

    Enfolding in one dear embrace

    Thy Saviour and thy Child!

    The rapt brow of the Desert John;

    The awful glory of that day

    When all the Father’s brightness shone

    Through manhood’s veil of clay.

    And, midst gray prophet forms, and wild

    Dark visions of the days of old,

    How sweetly woman’s beauty smiled

    Through locks of brown and gold!

    There Fornarina’s fair young face

    Once more upon her lover shone,

    Whose model of an angel’s grace

    He borrowed from her own.

    Slow passed that vision from my view,

    But not the lesson which it taught;

    The soft, calm shadows which it threw

    Still rested on my thought:

    The truth, that painter, bard, and sage,

    Even in Earth’s cold and changeful clime,

    Plant for their deathless heritage

    The fruits and flowers of time.

    We shape ourselves the joy or fear

    Of which the coming life is made,

    And fill our Future’s atmosphere

    With sunshine or with shade.

    The tissue of the Life to be

    We weave with colors all our own,

    And in the field of Destiny

    We reap as we have sown.

    Still shall the soul around it call

    The shadows which it gathered here,

    And, painted on the eternal wall,

    The Past shall reappear.

    Think ye the notes of holy song

    On Milton’s tuneful ear have died?

    Think ye that Raphael’s angel throng

    Has vanished from his side?

    Oh no!—We live our life again;

    Or warmly touched, or coldly dim,

    The pictures of the Past remain,—

    Man’s works shall follow him!

    1842.