My Picture

Blow as thou wilt, thou bitter gale
         Sharp, biting gale;
And glitter in thy icy mail,
     Thou muffled brook that turn’st the mill
Cold stars, that, in the steely sky,
         The ice-blue sky,
Like loveless eyes flash frostily,
Out of your halls of pride on high
     Look mocking as ye will.

A summer glory fills the room, 
          The little room,
From which no frost shall snatch the bloom,
     No icy wind-flaw waft it out;
For, sweetly on the twilight air,
          Dim, roseate air,
A picture glows, so wholly fair
It seems to shed the warm light where
     It folds me round about.

Ahead o’er-rippled with such hair—
          Brown, silken hair—
As angels of the twilight wear,
     Leans on an arm of slumbering nerve
That touches with a mute caress,
          A warm caress,
The flow of convoluted tress
And wavy mass, swept filletless
     From the white forehead’s curve.

How sweetly in that little face,
          That pure young face,
The rose and lily interlace
     The perfect splendors of their tints,
How gracefully that dainty chin,
          Her delicate chin,
To the plump cheek comes rounding in,
And sweeps in married curves to win
     The wailed throat’s shadowy hints.

From some translucent berry drips—
          For ripeness drips—
The color of those sweetest lips,
     That, moving not, one inner smile
Illumines, and illumes the eyes,
          Those hazel eyes,
From which the dusk of morning skies,
Struck through with sunlight, never dies,
     Pure-beaming all the while.

A light upon the curtained wall,
          My gray old wall,
A captured sunbeam in the hall,
     That Picture can not fade away;
For every line and every hue,
          Warm, roseate hue,
A peerless Master limned and drew,
And steeped the canvas through and through
     With love’s immortal ray.

Then blow and bite, thou bitter gale,
          Thou wintry gale;
And glitter in thy icy mail,
     Thou muddled stream beside the mill.
My Picture is a fadeless bloom, 
          A roseate bloom,
That, in the twilight of the room,
My heart like moonrise can illume,
     Like sunrise warm and thrill!