Legends and Lyrics: A Book of Verses (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Legends and Lyrics: A Book of Verses

The lights extinguished, by the hearth I leant, Half weary with a listless discontent. The flickering giant-shadows, gathering near, Closed round me with a dim and silent fear. All dull, all dark; save when the leaping flame, Glancing, lit up a Picture's ancient frame. Above the hearth it hung. Perhaps the night, My foolish tremors, or the gleaming light, Lent power to that Portrait dark and quaint A Portrait such as Rembrandt loved to paint The likeness of a Nun. I seemed to trace A world of sorrow in the patient face, In the thin hands folded across her breast Its own and the room's shadow hid the rest. I gazed and dreamed, and the dull embers stirred, Till an old legend that I once had heard Came back to me; linked to the mystic gloom Of that dark Picture in the ghostly room.

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