To My Own Portrait

How is it that before mine eyes,
While gazing on thy mien,
All my past years of life arise,
As in a mirror seen?
What spell within thee hath been shrined
To image back my own deep mind?

Even as a song of other times
Can trouble memory’s springs;
Even as a sound of vesper-chimes
Can wake departed things;
Even as a scent of vernal flowers
Hath records fraught with vanish’d hours,--

Such power is thine! They come, the dead,
From the grave’s bondage free,
And smiling back the changed are led
To look in love on thee;
And voices that are music flown
Speak to me in the heart’s full tone:

Till crowding thoughts my soul oppress--
The thoughts of happier years--
And a vain gush of tenderness
O’erflows in child-like tears;
A passion which I may not stay,
A sudden fount that must have way.

But thou, the while--oh! almost strange,
Mine imaged self! it seems
That on thy brow of peace no change
Reflects my own swift dreams;
Almost I marvel not to trace
Those lights and shadows in thy face.

To see thee calm, while powers thus deep--
Affection, Memory, Grief--
Pass o’er my soul as winds that sweep
O’er a frail aspen leaf!
Oh, that the quiet of thine eye
Might sink there when the storm goes by!

Yet look thou still serenely on,
And if sweet friends there be
That when my song and soul are gone
Shall seek my form in thee,--
Tell them of one for whom ’twas best
To flee away and be at rest!

“Mother! with thine earnest eye
Ever following silently;”