RAPHAEL.

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

I

SHALL not soon forget that sight:

The glow of Autumn's westering day,

A hazy warmth, a dreamy light,

On Raphael's picture lay.

It was a simple print I saw,

The fair face of a musing boy; Yet while I gazed a sense of awe Seemed blending with my joy.

A simple print:-the graceful flow
Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair,
And fresh young lip and cheek, and brow
Unmarked and clear, were there.

Yet through its sweet and calm repose
I saw the inward spirit shine;

It was as if before me rose

The white veil of a shrine.

As if, as Gothland's sage has told,
The hidden life, the man within,
Dissevered from its frame and mould,
By mortal eye were seen.

Was it the lifting of that eye,
The waving of that pictured hand?
Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky,
I saw the walls expand.

The narrow room had vanished,

Broad, luminous, remained alone,

space

Through which all hues and shapes of grace And beauty looked or shone.

Around the mighty master came

The marvels which his pencil wrought,
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought.

There drooped thy more than mortal face,
O Mother, beautiful and mild!
Enfolding in one dear embrace
Thy Saviour and thy Child!

The rapt brow of the Desert John;
The awful glory of that day,
When all the Father's brightness shone
Through manhood's veil of clay.

And, midst gray prophet forms, and wild
Dark visions of the days of old,
How sweetly woman's beauty smiled
Through locks of brown and gold!

There Fornarina's fair young face
Once more upon her lover shone,
Whose model of an angel's grace
He borrowed from her own.