Emily Burns
On seeing Shelley's portrait at Yale*
Through a painted window, thin and worn,
I nearly saw you. We were face to face
At one remove; once, in a room someplace,
You sat and saw your portrait slowly born.
And now, as if I'd folded time and space,
I stood before it, not quite next to you.
The luminous great eyes and wavy hair,
The soft dark clothing, and the resting quill -
Did I see you? Was the likeness true?
You are to me what skylarks were to you -
An unseen creature, inaccessible,
Singing at some unimagined height,
Drenching me with music from the air.
Your words remain behind you, and your soul
Burns out of them like summer-evening light
That melts dull clouds to fiery liquid gold.
Around this painted corner, I could see
That same soul in your face; a trace remained,
A miracle of painting, unexplained -
And something faltered, cold with joy, in me.
*Amelia Curran's portrait of Shelley (1819) seen at the Center for British Art, Yale University, during the 2003 exhibition Romantics and Revolutionaries: Regency Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery, London.
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