Poems (McDonald)/To a Picture

by Mary Noel McDonald

For works with similar titles, see To a Picture.

TO A PICTURE

of pierre de cornillan, grand master of the knights hospitallers, in a painter's studio.

  What dost thou here, old knight?
With thine armour on, and thy casque laid by;
To the field! to the field! where the valiant fight,
  And brave men meet to die.

  This is no place for thee!
The sound of the bugle should greet thine ear;
Hie, hie where thy banner is waving free!
  Why art thou lingering here?

  They wait thee to lead them on,
They list thy war-note by hill and stream:
Hath the spirit that nerved thee to battle flown?
  Oh! wake thee from thy dream!

  Thou phantom of the past!
Long hast thou slumbered in dull decay:
And thy comrades, the bravest, the best, the last,
  Have passed like thee away.

  Vainly I call thee now!
Thou heed'st not a moment my feeble breath,
Thine eye is dim, and thy noble brow
  Pressed by the hand of Death.

  Thy clarion's voice is still;
And thy banner furled, to the moth is given,
No more shall its folds at thy sovereign will,
  Float in the breeze of heaven.

  All is alike forgot!
Thou, as do others, have laid thee down,
Thy deeds of valor remembering not,
  And deaf to all renown.

  Thou art but imaged here,
For time o'er thy spirit hath no more sway:
Thou hast finished thy bright and high career,
  And passed to thy doom away.

  And only a glorious art,
May bear thee back by it wonderous power,
And methinks it whispers the human heart,
  "So brief is glory's hour."