WORDSWORTH'S POETICAL WORKS.

1834.

LINES.

SUGGESTED BY A PORTRAIT FROM THE PENCIL OF F. STONE.

[This Portrait has hung for many years in our principal sittingroom, and represents J. Q.* as she was when a girl. The picture, though it is somewhat thinly painted, has much merit in tone and general effect it is chiefly valuable, however, from the sentiment that pervades it. The anecdote of the saying of the monk in sight of Titian's picture was told in this house by Mr Wilkie, and was, I believe, first communicated to the public in this poem, the former portion of which I was composing at the time. Southey heard the story from Miss Hutchinson, and transferred it to the "Doctor"; but it is not easy to explain how my friend Mr Rogers, in a note subsequently added to his "Italy," was led to speak of the same remarkable words having many years before been spoken in his hearing by a monk or priest in front of a picture of the Last Supper, placed over a Refectory-table in a convent at Padua.]

BEGUILED into forgetfulness of care

Due to the day's unfinished task; of pen
Or book regardless, and of that fair scene
In Nature's prodigality displayed

Before my window, oftentimes and long

I

gaze upon a Portrait whose mild gleam

Of beauty never ceases to enrich

The common light; whose stillness charms the air,
Or seems to charm it, into like repose;

Whose silence, for the pleasure of the ear,
Surpasses sweetest music. There she sits

* See Note A in the Appendix to this volume.-ED.
VIII.
A

With emblematic purity attired

In a white vest, white as her marble neck
Is, and the pillar of the throat would be
But for the shadow by the drooping chin
Cast into that recess the tender shade,
The shade and light, both there and everywhere,
And through the very atmosphere she breathes,
Broad, clear, and toned harmoniously, with skill
That might from nature have been learnt in the hour
When the lone shepherd sees the morning spread
Upon the mountains. Look at her, whoe'er
Thou be that, kindling with a poet's soul,
Hast loved the painter's true Promethean craft
Intensely from Imagination take

The treasure,

what mine eyes behold see thou, Even though the Atlantic ocean roll between.

A silver line, that runs from brow to crown
And in the middle parts the braided hair,
Just serves to show how delicate a soil
The golden harvest grows in; and those eyes,
Soft and capacious as a cloudless sky
Whose azure depths their colour emulates,
Must needs be conversant with upward looks,
Prayer's voiceless service; but now, seeking nought
And shunning nought, their own peculiar life

Of motion they renounce, and with the head
Partake its inclination towards earth

In humble grace, and quiet pensiveness

Caught at the point where it stops short of sadness.

Offspring of soul-bewitching Art, make me Thy confidant! say, whence derived that air Of calm abstraction? Can the ruling thought

Be with some lover far away, or one
Crossed by misfortune, or of doubted faith?
Inapt conjecture! Childhood here, a moon
Crescent in simple loveliness serene,

Has but approached the gates of womanhood,
Not entered them; her heart is yet unpierced
By the blind Archer-god; her fancy free:
The fount of feeling, if unsought elsewhere,
Will not be found.

Her right hand, as it lies
Across the slender wrist of the left arm
Upon her lap reposing, holds-but mark
How slackly, for the absent mind permits
No firmer grasp a little wild-flower, joined
As in a posy, with a few pale ears

Of yellowing corn, the same that overtopped
And in their common birthplace sheltered it
'Till they were plucked together; a blue flower
Called by the thrifty husbandman a weed;
But Ceres, in her garland, might have worn
That ornament, unblamed. The floweret, held
In scarcely conscious fingers, was, she knows,
(Her Father told her so) in youth's gay dawn
Her Mother's favourite; and the orphan Girl,
In her own dawn-a dawn less gay and bright,
Loves it, while there in solitary peace

She sits, for that departed Mother's sake.
-Not from a source less sacred is derived
(Surely I do not err) that pensive air

Of calm abstraction through the face diffused
And the whole person.

Words have something told

More than the pencil can, and verily