The Portrait

This is her picture as she was:
         It seems a thing to wonder on,
As though mine image in the glass
         Should tarry when myself am gone.
I gaze until she seems to stir,—
Until mine eyes almost aver
         That now, even now, the sweet lips part
         To breathe the words of the sweet heart:—
And yet the earth is over her.

Alas! even such the thin-drawn ray
         That makes the prison-depths more rude,—
The drip of water night and day
         Giving a tongue to solitude.
Yet only this, of love's whole prize,
Remains; save what in mournful guise
         Takes counsel with my soul alone,—
         Save what is secret and unknown,
Below the earth, above the skies.

In painting her I shrin'd her face
         Mid mystic trees, where light falls in
Hardly at all; a covert place
         Where you might think to find a din
Of doubtful talk, and a live flame
Wandering, and many a shape whose name
         Not itself knoweth, and old dew,
         And your own footsteps meeting you,
And all things going as they came.

A deep dim wood; and there she stands
         As in that wood that day: for so
Was the still movement of her hands
         And such the pure line's gracious flow.
And passing fair the type must seem,
Unknown the presence and the dream.
         'Tis she: though of herself, alas!
         Less than her shadow on the grass
Or than her image in the stream.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(The Portrait - excerpt)