word, nor action of hers, must she unfit him for the active service of his glorious calling.

Nay, like the Lady Una, in the legend of the Redcross Knight, she must be very ready and diligent to arm him for the enterprise before him." In the end the ladye told him that unless the armour which she brought would serve him (that is the armour of a Christian man, specified by St. Paul in the fifth chapter of his epistle to the Ephesians), that he could not succeed."

* Spenser's Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, introductory to "The Faery Queene."

THE PORTRAIT.

Written on seeing a Portrait of a Lady, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

BY T. K. HERVEY.

A PORTRAIT is a mournful thing,
A shadow of a joy,-

An echo of some silenced string,-
A feather from love's sunny wing,
Snatched as it wanders by.

Oh! echoes are as sad as sighs,
Though gladness give them birth;
And even beauty's shadow lies
Like darkness on the earth.

(Still, by the fading light is thrown

The broadest shadow round,

And echo, with her sweetest tone,

Proclaims the death of sound.)

And feathers from the bright-plumed things

That round our life-paths play,

Are tokens of the very wings

That bore the birds away!

S

A portrait !is it not a tale,
Told ever of the past ?-

A flower all scentless, sad, and pale,
But culled in some once-happy vale
That storms have made a waste!-
A vision, when most fair and bright,
As mournful as the moon,

That has no beauty till the night,
And owes her very charm of light
To splendours dimmed or gone!
A mystic glass to show the mind
Some lost familiar face,

Some pilgrim who has stayed behind,
Or strayed and left no trace;

Who, like Barzillai,* shed love's ray
Upon our path "a little way,"
Then took again the gleam he gave,

And, o'er the Jordan of the grave,
"Returned unto his place!"—

An unsealed charm, a half-wrought spell,

Till life or light depart;

And then it rings a passing-bell

*"And Barzillai said unto the king- *

"Thy servant will go a little way over Jordan with the king.

*

*

*

*

*

*

"Let thy servant, I pray thee, turn back again, that I may die in mine own city, and be buried by the grave of my father, and of my mother. "And when the king was come over, the king kissed Barzillai, and blessed him; and he returned unto his own place."-2 Samuel, ch. xix.

For ever in the heart;

Whose knelling-like the wizard's call
That shook the prophet's bed-

Brings up-as rose the sage to Saul-
But "covered with a mantle "*—all
The distant and the dead!

A picture!-'tis a mournful thing
While those it paints are near;

For all the clouds and smiles that spring,
In mingled light and shadowing,

The hope, the doubt, the fear;

The thousand, thousand thoughts that play,

Like birds that come, and pass away,

Upon a restless wing;

The crowding, fleeting fancies given,

That, like the winking stars of heaven,

Flash, fade, and re-appear;

The looks that round the heart-strings creep,

Until they almost make us weep,

They are so wildly dear!

It has a single chain alone,

Of all, it can but treasure one!—

But one, to tell of all the rest,

And picture to the pining breast

The myriads that are gone.

"And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, An old man cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle."-1 Samuel, ch. xxviii.

Oh! all as soon may mortal write
Life's legend on the sky,

Or stay each wandering breeze's flight,
That floats in fragrance by,—

As soon arrest each glancing gleam
That sports on yon blue river,

And chain it to the murmuring stream,
To glisten there for ever,—

As bind, within the spell of art,

The varied thoughts that haunt the heart,
That climb the lips, the brow, the eyes,
To take their beauty by surprise,

And, as they rest, or mix, or move,
Make up the thing we love!

A picture is a mournful thing,
While those it paints are nigh;

A torch that shows time's gloomy wing
In darkness sailing by;

A lamp-by whose unchanging ray
We watch the working of decay,
And see, beneath its steady light,
How fast comes down the night;
An index-by whose aid we count
The charms that, one by one,
Have withered, till the dark amount
Proclaims that all is done;

A sun-beneath whose beams we trace