Explore "Chiaro-Oscuro" by Annie Fellows Johnston on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
SOMEHOW I love to look at the picture I made of her, / Work of an idle time, the summer of life's long year; / For as I stand and gaze, dreaming of those lost days, / Almost it seems to me I can see her sitting here.
That is the way she sat, with her head a trifle raised, / Looking thoughtfully out at a scene I could never see.
Delicate color of rose dawning and dying down, / Flushing the rare sweet face as she listened or spoke to me.
Whitest light of the sky I showered on her upturned brow, / Gathered the darkest shades and brushed them into her hair, / Thinking the while I worked of the law that always sends / The deepest shadows to follow the high lights everywhere.
Now as I sit and gaze at the dream on the canvas caught, / Sadly the thought comes back, to torture with unbelief -- / Why must it always be that the strong white light of love / Is followed forevermore by the deepest shadow of grief?