<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=391996" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Before Her Portrait In Youth</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">As lovers, banished from their lady's face<br>And hopeless of her grace,<br>Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place,<br>Fondly adore<br>Some stealth-won cast attire she wore,<br>A kerchief or a glove:<br>And at the lover's beck<br>Into the glove there fleets the hand,<br>Or at impetuous command<br>Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:<br>So I, in very lowlihead of love, -<br>Too shyly reverencing<br>To let one thought's light footfall smooth<br>Tread near the living, consecrated thing, -<br>Treasure me thy cast youth.<br>This outworn vesture, tenantless of thee,<br>Hath yet my knee,<br>For that, with show and semblance fair<br>Of the past Her<br>Who once the beautiful, discarded raiment bare,<br>It cheateth me.<br>As gale to gale drifts breath<br>Of blossoms' death,<br>So dropping down the years from hour to hour<br>This dead youth's scent is wafted me to-day:<br>I sit, and from the fragrance dream the flower.<br>So, then, she looked (I say);<br>And so her front sunk down<br>Heavy beneath the poet's iron crown:<br>On her mouth museful sweet -<br>(Even as the twin lips meet)<br>Did thought and sadness greet:<br>Sighs<br>In those mournful eyes<br>So put on visibilities;<br>As viewless ether turns, in deep on deep, to dyes.<br>Thus, long ago,<br>She kept her meditative paces slow<br>Through maiden meads, with waved shadow and gleam<br>Of locks half-lifted on the winds of dream,<br>Till love up-caught her to his chariot's glow.<br>Yet, voluntary, happier Proserpine!<br>This drooping flower of youth thou lettest fall<br>I, faring in the cockshut-light, astray,<br>Find on my 'lated way,<br>And stoop, and gather for memorial,<br>And lay it on my bosom, and make it mine.<br>To this, the all of love the stars allow me,<br>I dedicate and vow me.<br>I reach back through the days<br>A trothed hand to the dead the last trump shall not raise.<br>The water-wraith that cries<br>From those eternal sorrows of thy pictured eyes<br>Entwines and draws me down their soundless intricacies!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Francis+Thompson">Francis Thompson</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=391996" data-title="Before Her Portrait In Youth de Francis Thompson" data-description="As lovers, banished from their lady's face And hopeless of her grace, Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place, Fondly adore Some stealth-won cast attire she wore, A kerchief or a glove: And at the lover's beck Into the glove there fleets the hand..."></div> </div> </div>

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