LINES,

SUGGESTED BY ROGERS’ STATUE OF RUTH.

———

BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

———

From age to age, from clime to clime,

A spirit, bright as her own morn,

She walks the golden fields of Time,

As erst amid the yellow corn.

A form o’er which the hallowed veil

Of years bequeaths a lovelier light,

As when the mists of morning sail

Round some far isle to make it bright.

And as some reaper ’mid the grain,

Or binder resting o’er his sheaf,

Beheld her on the orient plain,

A passing vision, bright and brief;

And while he gazed let fall perchance

The sheaf or sickle from his hand—

Thus even here, as in a trance,

Before her kneeling form I stand.

But not as then she comes and goes

To live in memory alone;

The perfect soul before me glows

Immortal in the living stone.

And while upon her face I gaze

And scan her rarely rounded form,

The glory of her native days

Comes floating o’er me soft and warm;—

Comes floating, till this shadowy place

Brightens to noontide, and receives

The breath of that old harvest space

With all its sunshine and its sheaves!

It is a form beloved of yore,

And when that passed the name breathed on;

But now the form lives as before

To charm even though the name were gone.

And though the future years may dim

And mar this lovely type of Truth,

Through every action, feature, limb,

The breathing stone shall whisper Ruth!