To My Own Miniature Picture Taken At Two Years Of Age.

And I was once like this! that glowing cheek     Was mine, those pleasure-sparkling eyes, that brow     Smooth as the level lake, when not a breeze     Dies o'er the sleeping surface! twenty years     Have wrought strange alteration! Of the friends     Who once so dearly prized this miniature,     And loved it for its likeness, some are gone     To their last home; and some, estranged in heart,     Beholding me with quick-averted glance     Pass on the other side! But still these hues     Remain unalter'd, and these features wear     The look of Infancy and Innocence.     I search myself in vain, and find no trace     Of what I was: those lightly-arching lines     Dark and o'erhanging now; and that mild face     Settled in these strong lineaments!--There were     Who form'd high hopes and flattering ones of thee     Young Robert! for thine eye was quick to speak     Each opening feeling: should they not have known     When the rich rainbow on the morning cloud     Reflects its radiant dies, the husbandman     Beholds the ominous glory sad, and fears     Impending storms? they augur'd happily,     For thou didst love each wild and wonderous tale     Of faery fiction, and thine infant tongue     Lisp'd with delight the godlike deeds of Greece     And rising Rome; therefore they deem'd forsooth     That thou shouldst tread PREFERMENT'S pleasant path.     Ill-judging ones! they let thy little feet     Stray in the pleasant paths of POESY,     And when thou shouldst have prest amid the crowd     There didst thou love to linger out the day     Loitering beneath the laurels barren shade.     SPIRIT of SPENSER! was the wanderer wrong?     This little picture was for ornament     Design'd, to shine amid the motley mob     Of Fashion and of Folly,--is it not     More honour'd by this solitary song?