Robert Southey stares at a tiny painted likeness of his two-year-old self and is struck by all that twenty years have changed. The glowing cheek and smooth brow have given way to dark, heavy lines; the innocence preserved in the picture is nowhere to be found in the man. Some friends who treasured this miniature are dead, others coldly look away. A melancholy, almost eerie mood settles in as he sees himself doubled — the enduring child and the altered adult. He remembers how people saw quick intelligence in his young eyes and prophesied a bright public career. But, like a farmer who reads a morning rainbow as a storm warning, they misread the signs: his love of fairy tales and ancient heroes was already leading him into poetry’s quiet, unprofitable shade. The final lines turn gently defiant — this solitary poem, he suggests, honors the forgotten little picture more than any place in the world of fashion and folly ever could.
To My Own Minature Picture Taken At Two Years Of Age — Summary
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?