Here painted by himself with rugged force,
    The master's likeness gravely gazes down;
A man advanced in years, in garments coarse,
    Is limned in sober gray and black and brown.

See here the firm-set mouth, the shaggy hair,
    The bushy beard, the high, determined jaw,
The knotted hand, as though from out his lair
    A dreaming lion stretched his mighty paw.

High over all, his many wrinkled brows
    Lift like a thunder-smitten mountain dome—
A head to wear Athenian myrtle boughs,
    And laurel chaplets of Eternal Rome!

As in a rough brown bulb with ragged husk,
    A splendid starry lily has its birth,
His genius grouped to dawn amid this dusk,
    And brought from heaven new glories for the earth.

Here in this Winter landscape, white with snow,
    With naked rocks, bare trees and shivering herds,
The Springtime slept, to wake in godlike glow,
    With newborn blossoms lulled by songs of birds.

In melancholy majesty he stands,
    Alone, and all bereft of earthly ties.
No maiden ever kissed those rugged hands,
    Or lured the love light from those solemn eyes!

Born of no mother, save a marble sheath,
    His offspring, waiting for him, slept alone;
His Moses and his David first caught breath,
    Begotten by their father out of stone.

Like one who roams at twilight, lone and late,
    A mountain peak, where winds of Winter moan,
The truly wise can never find a mate,
    The truly great must always tread alone!

Down in deep vales he hears the herdsman's cries,
    The cowbells faintly tinkling far below—
But all around him as the daylight dies,
    Eternal cold, and everlasting snow!