Page:Edgar Poe and his critics.djvu/21

Rh with sensibility and soul—a face to inspire men with interest and curiosity.”

There is a quiet drawing-room in street, New York—a sort of fragrant and delicious “clovernook” in the heart of the noisy city—where hung, some three years ago, the original painting from which this engraving is a copy. Happening to meet there at the time a company of authors and poets, among whom were Mary Forest, Alice and Phœbe Cary, the Stoddards, T. B. Aldrich, and others, we heard one of the party say, in speaking of the portrait, that its aspect was that of a beautiful and desolate shrine from which the Genius had departed, and that it recalled certain lines to one of the antique marbles:

Oh melancholy eyes! Oh empty eyes, from which the soul has gone To see the far-off countries!”

Near this luminous but impassive face, with its sad and soulless eyes, was a portrait of Poe’s unrelenting