Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/481

PORTRAIT D'UNE DAME ESPAGNOLE Pity thy unconfined

Clear spirit, whose enfranchised eyes

Use not their grosser sense?

Ah, no! thy bright intelligence

Hath its own Paradise,

A realm wherein to hear and see

Things hidden from our kind.

Not thou, not thou—'t is we

Are deaf, are dumb, are blind!

PORTRAIT D'UNE DAME ESPAGNOLE

(FORTUNY)

hand that drew thee lies in Roman soil,

Whilst on the canvas thou hast deathless grown,

Endued by him who deemed it meaner toil

To give the world a portrait save thine own.

Yet had he found thy peer, and Rome forborne

Such envy of his conquest over Time,

Beauty had waked, and Art another morn

Had gained, and ceased to sorrow for her prime.

What spirit was it—where the masters are—

Brooding the gloom and glory that were Spain,

Through centuries waited in its orb afar

Until our age Fortuny's brush should gain?

What stroke but his who pictured in their state

Queen, beggar, noble, Philip's princely brood,

Could thus the boast of Seville recreate,

Even when one like thee before him stood?

Like thee, own child of Spain, whose beauteous pride,

Desire, disdain, all sins thy mien express, 451