Poems (Allen)/An Old Portrait

by Elizabeth Chase Allen

AN OLD PORTRAIT.

HIS time-worn canvas bears a pictured face,
 Which, once beheld, comes back to thought again,—
Passionate, proud, yet touched with tender grace,
 And marked with lines which tell of hidden pain.

O noble face! in whose compelling eyes
 There lurks a power which stays me on my way,
Which thrills me always with a new surprise,
 And holds me gazing half the livelong day,—

Strange eyes, whose earthly task of smiles and tears
 Was finished long ago, and sealed in night;
Eyes which were closed in death a hundred years
 Before mine own had opened to the light,—

Why do you haunt me so? Some bitter days,
 When all the rose-tints vanish from my sky,
And I go stumbling down life's darkest ways,
 I can but think perhaps the reason why

My life has been so barren and forlorn,
 So full of tears and losses, is that Fate
Made some unkind mistake, and I was born
 An age too early or an age too late.

And when I read in these strange, wistful eyes
 The yearning lack of something which I know
They never found in life, I think with sighs
 A century too late—ah, more's the woe!

Perhaps I am the one for whom he sought,
 Walking the earth's dry places o'er and o'er,
Calling for her, alas! who answered not,
 And, never finding, lacked forevermore!

Perhaps I might have lived a nobler life,
 If but these marvellous eyes had held me dear;
Perhaps I might have soothed the proud soul's strife,
 Outlooking from their darkness deep and clear;—

Perhaps—who knows? O sad and tender eyes,
 Look not upon me so reproachfully;
Since bitterly my soul forever cries,
 "O cruel Love, that did not wait for me!"