The Knickerbocker/Volume 13/Number 5/The Speaking Picture
Brooklyn, 1839.
THE SPEAKING PICTURE.
SUGGESTED BY VANDERLYN'S PORTRAIT OF MRS. ALLSTON, DAUGHTER OF AARON BURR.
Is it life, is it life, in the picture I see?Can the grave yield its victim, the past smile on me?From caverns of ocean, from shades of the night,Comes this vision of beauty, this being of light?Let me gaze, let me gaze on that radiant brow,On the lips breathing life, on the cheek's mantling glow;Oh! 'tis youth's purest bloom, it is life's sweetest grace,'T is the past smiling back from that beautiful face!Let me gaze, let me gaze!—can the picture be true?Was the eye's lustre thus, and the cheek's this bright hue?Was it thus in the halls of the mirthful she shone,Like a star in the firmament, peerless and lone?Was the hair bound with roses? the eyes flashing light?Let me gaze, let me gaze on the youthful and bright!So looked she, so smiled she, in years that are gone;But we greet not her footsteps, we hear not her tone!Oh, 't is life! but the friends of her youth are all fled,In the halls where she shone, the fresh garlands are dead:And the loving and loved wept her long and in vain;By the dim shore they parted, and met not again!Oh! 't is life, it is life, in the picture I see,'T is the past breathing back in its beauty to me;But there's grief with that beauty, there's wo with its bloomWhen I gaze on that fair face, and think of her doom!In the silence of night, from those lips came a moan,On those bright sunny tresses the salt spray was thrown;And those deep eyes sought vainly some help to descry,When the tempest swept past, and the billows dashed high!Some pearly sea-cave may now pillow her head,By some nymph of the wave might her dirge have been said,As the white waters closed o’er the form once so fair,And the loud wailing winds rose above her wild prayer!Oh! 'tis life, it is life!—for the picture smiles yet,With youth's mocking bloom, but her sun hath long set;We gaze on her beauty, we wait for her tone,But the grave keeps its trust, and the sea holds its own!