UNKNOWN.
(On receiving the portrait of a young lady
personally
unknown to the author.)
Image of one whose lips and eyes
Have never moved me with their spell;
Whose greeting smiles, and farewell sighs,
To happier hearts their meaning tell.
The echo of thy life, to me,
Is but as music heard in dreams;
Or like a cloud beyond the sea,
Or foreign flowers by foreign streams.
And yet I know—who may not know?
That these twin windows of the soul
Have had their hours of overflow,
Their share of gladness and of dole.
I know, for ’tis “the common lot,”
That oft within this comely brow
Angelic hope, and loving thought,
Have reared fair castles, crumbled now.
The stars that all alike behold,
The air we breathe, the sun that cheers,
Unite, and evermore enfold,
The generations of the years.
And hence it needs no clasp of hands,
Nor vocal utterance, face to face,
To feel those sympathetic bands
That unify the human race.