s art
Created, thronged the room:
And as the low winds echoed far
The bell for evening prayer,
The dying painter's earnest tones
Fell on the languid air.

"The spectral form of Death is nigh,
The thread of Life is spun,
Ave Maria! I have looked
Upon my latest sun.
And yet 'tis not with pale disease
This frame is worn away,
Nor yet--nor yet with length of years--
A child but yesterday"

"I found within my father's hall
No fervent love to claim--
The curse that marked me from my birth
Devoted me to shame.
I saw upon my brother's brow
Angelic beauty lay,
The mirror gave me back a form
That thrilled me with dismay."

"And soon I learned to shrink from all,
The lowly and the high;
To see but scorn on every lip,
Contempt in every eye.
And for a time e'en Nature's smile
A bitter mockery wore,
For beauty stamped each living thing
The wide creation o'er;"

"And I alone was cursed and loathed;
'Twas in a garden bower
I knelt one eve, and scalding tears
Fell fast on many a flower;
And as I rose I marked with awe
And agonizing grief,
A frail mimosa at my feet
Fold close each fragile leaf."

"Alas! how dark my lot if thus
A plant could shrink from me;
But when I looked again I marked
That from the honey-bee,
The falling leaf, the bird's gay wing,
It shrunk with pain and fear,
A kindred presence I had found,
Life waxed sublimely clear."

"I climbed the lofty mountain height
And communed with the skies,
And felt within my grateful heart
Strange aspirations rise.
Oh! what was this humanity
When every beaming star
Was filled with lucid intellect,
Congenial, though afar."

"I mused beneath the avalanche,
And traced the sparkling stream,
Till Nature's face became to me
A passion and a dream:"
Then thirsting for a higher lore
I left my childhood's home,
And stayed not till I gazed upon
The hills of fallen Rome.

"I stood amid the forms of light,
Seraphic and divine,
The painter's wand had summoned from
The dim Ideal's shrine;
And felt within my fevered soul
Ambition's wasting fire,
And seized the pencil with a vague
And passionate desire"

"To shadow fort