And brilliant wreaths the altar have arrayed,
Where meet her noblest youth, and loveliest maid.
To that young bride each grace hath Nature given,
Which glows on Art's divinest dream,—her eye
Hath a pure sunbeam of her native heaven—
Her cheek a tinge of morning's richest dye;
Fair as that daughter of the south, whose form
Still breathes and charms, in Vinci's colours warm.*[1]
But is she blest?—for sometimes o'er her smile
A soft sweet shade of pensiveness is cast,
And in her liquid glance there seems a while,
To dwell some thought whose soul is with the past.
Yet soon it flies—a cloud that leaves no trace
On the sky's azure of its dwelling-place.
- ↑
* An allusion to Leonardo da Vinci's picture of his wife Mona Lisa, supposed to be the most perfect imitation of Nature ever exhibited in painting. See Vasari in his Lives of the Painters.
