Poems (Blake)/The Picture

by Mary Elizabeth Blake

THE PICTURE.

(OF JAMES LOWELL PUTNAM, IN ATHENÆUM GALLERY.)

A calm, sweet face, with earnest eyes
 And thoughtful brow, full-arched above it,
A mouth whose graveness won surprise,
 Whose tender sweetness made one love it;
A face that told how souls aspire
 That look beyond to-day's revealing;
A boy, with all of manhood's fire,—
 A man, with all of boyhood's feeling.

They told his life, his honored name,
 His spotless worth, his spirit's beauty,
His few fair years—yet known to fame,
 His sacrifice for right and duty:
His earnest love, his winning grace,—
 But while they spoke of death and glory,
I only read the silent face,
 And dreamed its eyes told all the story.

The soul that waited not for time,
 But sprang at once to perfect flower,
When the first peal of freedom's chime
 Rang out for the appointed hour;
The answering cry, the answering hand,
 Which brooked no weak or base delay,
But, swift for God and native land,
 Flung life and all it loved away;

Yet saw beyond his loss the gain,
 And laid, with step that would not falter,
His blessed gift of love and pain,
 An offering fair, on Freedom's altar:
Wrapped all the future from his sight,
 Thrust back the ties he might not sever,
Then proud, as one who walks in light,
 Gave up himself to God forever!