The Two Pictures.
Two pictuiv s hung on the clingy wall Of a grand old Florentine hall : One of a child of beauty rare. With a cherub face and golden hair, The lovely look of whose radiant, eyes Pilled the soul with thoughts of paradise ; The other face was a visage vile, Marked with the lines of lnst and guile, A loathsome being, whose fcatuics fell Brought to the soul weird thoughts of hell. Side by side, in their frames of gold, Dusty and dingy, cracked and old, • This "is the solemn tale they told : A youthful painter found one day, In the streets of Rome, n child at, play. And, moved by the beaufcv t hat it bore — The heavenly look that its features wore— On a cam-as, radiant and grand, He painted its face with a master hand. Year after year on his wall it .hung, 'Twas ever' joyful and always >oung— Driving away all thoughts of gloom While'the painter toiled in his dingy room. Like an, angel of light, it met his ga7e, Bringing him dreams of his boyhood days. Filling his soul with a hsnse of praise. His raven ringlets grew thin mid grey ; His young ambition all passed aw ay. Yet he looked for years, in many a place, To find a contrast Vo that sh eefc'face. Through haunts of vice in the night, he strayed To find some ruin that crime had made. At last, in a prison cell, he caught A glimpse of the hideous (iend lie sought. On a canvas weird and wild, but grand, He painted the face with a master hand. His task was done ; 'twas a work sublime, An angel of joy and a fiend of crime - A lesson of life from the wreck ot time. O crime ! with ruin thy road is strewn. The brightest beauty tlje world has known. Thy power has wasted, till, in the mind, No trace of its presence is leifc behind. The loathsome wretch in the dungeon low, With a face of a fiend and a look of woeRuined by revels of crime an'l sin, A pitiful wreck of what, might have been. Hated and shunned, and without a home, Was the child that played in the streets of Rozne.
— Chicago News
The Two Pictures.
Otago Witness, Issue 1805, 25 June 1886, Page 24
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