Poems (Piatt)/Volume 1/My Artist

by Sarah Piatt

MY ARTIST. [A. V. P.—Nat. 1864.]

So slight, and just a little vain
 Of eyes and amber-tinted hair
Such as you will not see again—
 To watch him at the window there,
Why, you would not suspect, I say,
The rising rival of Doré.

No sullen lord of foreign verse
 Such as great Dante yet he knows;
No wandering Jew's long legend-curse
 On his light hand its darkness throws;
Nor has the Bible suffered much,
So far, from his-irreverent touch.

Yet, can his restless pencil lack
 A master Fancy, weird and strong
In black-and-white—but chiefly black!—
 When at its call such horrors throng?
What Fantasies of Fairyland
More shadowy were ever planned!

But giants and enchantments make
 Not all the glory of his Art:
His vast and varied power can take
 In real things a real part.
His latest pictures here I see:
Will you not look at some with me?

First, "Alexander." From his wars,
 With arms of awful length he seems
To reach some very-pointed stars,
 As if "more worlds" were in his dreams!
But, hush—the Artist tells us why:
"You read—'His hands could touch the sky."^[1]

Here—mark how marvellous, how new!—
 Above a drowning ship, at night,
Close to the moon the sun shines, too,
 While lightnings show in streaks of white———
Still, should my eyes grow dim, ah, then
Their tears will wet those sinking men!

There in wild weather, quite forlorn,
 And queer of cloak, and grim of hat,
With locks that might be better shorn,
 High on a steeple—who is that?
"It is the man who—I forget—
Stood on a tower in the wet."^[2]

His faults? He yet is young, you know—
 Four with his last year's butterflies.
But think what wonders books may show
 When the new Tennysons arise!
For fame that he might illustrate
Let poets be content to wait!

1. Line from a familiar child's poem in a school-book.
2. "I stood on a tower in the wet,
   And Old Year and New Year met."—Tennyson.