A Contrast

Can you open that ebony Casket?Look, this is the key: but stay,Those are only a few old lettersWhich I keep,--to burn some day.

Yes, that Locket is quaint and ancient;But leave it, dear, with the ring,And give me the little PortraitWhich hangs by a crimson string.

I have never opened that CasketSince, many long years ago,It was sent me back in angerBy one whom I used to know.

But I want you to see the Portrait:I wonder if you can traceA look of that smiling creatureLeft now in my faded face.

It was like me once; but rememberThe weary relentless years,And Life, with its fierce, brief Tempests,And its long, long rain of tears.

Is it strange to call it my Portrait?Nay, smile, dear, for well you may,To think of that radiant VisionAnd of what I am to-day.

With restless, yet confident longingHow those blue eyes seem to gazeInto deep and exhaustless Treasures,All hid in the coming days.

With that trust which leans on the Future,And counts on her promised store,Until she has taught us to trembleAnd hope,--but to trust no more.

How that young, light heart would have pitiedMe now--if her dreams had shownA quiet and weary womanWith all her illusions flown.

Yet I--who shall soon be resting,And have passed the hardest part,Can look back with a deeper pityOn that young unconscious heart.

It is strange; but Life's currents drift usSo surely and swiftly on,That we scarcely notice the changes,And how many things are gone:

And forget, while to-day absorbs us,How old mysteries are unsealed;How the old, old ties are loosened,And the old, old wounds are healed.

And we say that our Life is fleetingLike a story that Time has told;But we fancy that we--we onlyAre just what we were of old.

So now and then it is wisdomTo gaze, as I do to-day,At a half-forgotten relicOf a Time that is passed away.

The very look of that Portrait,The Perfume that seems to clingTo those fragile and faded letters,And the Locket, and the Ring,

If they only stirred in my spiritForgotten pleasure and pain,--Why, memory is often bitter,And almost always in vain;

But the contrast of bygone hoursComes to rend a veil away,--And I marvel to see the strangerWho is living in me to-day.