Words for the Hour/High Art
HIGH ART.
So, friends, you see my picture brought to endWith labor manifold of eye and hand,And that whose slaves they are, the master-brain.Great Angelo's Last Judgment I've reversed,And Hell on Earth is what I have to show.The subject is more homelike than you think,The scenes we move in gave the atmosphere,The whole is painted from what 's next at hand.
You see the emblems of the time and placeForeshadowed in the City's household Gods—An elm that offers hanging, to my mind,—Spires like to lightning-rods of heavenly grace,Whose services are merely possible;That fire, too, has a fashion of its own,And might consume an unprotected soul,—With groupings of the granite piles that standFor Babel's pride, without her gift of tongues.
Most of your number claim some feature here,Some act or gesture, woven with my toil.You, Madam, seize upon the hair and browSo golden-placid in this pardoning Saint—They 're yours indeed, but here the likeness ends.Your eyes, you see, were not the spirit sort,Your mouth, a pursed conventionality;More than one weary morning's work it tookTo help what was forgotten in your making.That Matron, so familiar to our ken,Who loves her scandal raw as English beef,And, so she gets her pound of shivering flesh,Is little careful how she comes by it;You 'll know her, by her slab and jaunty air,Her spiteful feathers, and her glossy back;But aught so worthless as her countenanceArt does not keep, so that is turned elsewhere.
You, addle-pate with diamonds in your gift;—You, not of God, but Babbage, clever thingTo calculate, and add, and multiply,—And you, poor Wagling, striking baldly nowAt follies you have supped on, in your time,I've shadowed with an artist's charity,But you, stage-villain of some tragedy That shudders through the smoothness of your face;Thank God, Sir, by the bending of your knees,I do not show you in my pilloryFor gentler fools to gape at, and contemn!
And this veiled figure that dishevelled flies,Or beats back scorn with scorn, or weeps at pity,It has the face no second-sight can show.
What—it mislikes you? I've allowed myselfSome freedoms? Yes—a painter's privilege;To put on canvas what you would not showIf you could help the same, being "ware of it.I've made a Bandit of a bearded wretchBy dashing courage in his vacant eyes.That persecuting Jew is horrible?He worships weekly at a Christian shrine.I've clothed in scarlet one whose worldly dressIs a prim rainbow of proprieties,—I let the scarlet of her soul strike throughThe drab decorum, as another drewThe fiery Corday, going to her death,Draped in the hue of her impetuous blood.I've suited Harpies claws to well-bred hands,And put the snake-wreath for the snaky tongue. Well—but I want a picture, as you know,And your strong points came excellently in,—For men and women of the best reputeMake cheats, thieves, cut-throats, with a little aid.
So, you have helped me to a work of Art,And, without pains of yours, to men's remark—Oh! take elsewhere your favor, if you will—But what you 've taught me, in your own despite,I keep for my own uses, and the world's.Go—sit to every artist save the Sun—For, hark ye, as a friend—it were not wiseTo tempt his rendering of your facial text.
And, now I think of it, your wrath assistsA project that has grown on me, of late—For, having quartered in your haunts so longThat I have got your wickedness by heart,What choice is left me, but an hermitage,Where converse of the calm immortal soulsShall help your poison with its antidote,Till Art be purged of grief and bitterness.I'll build its walls of sturdy monoliths,(Faiths without dogmas—Mother-sciences.)Apocalyptic Hope shall ceil the roof With visions that were with me from my birth,I'll teach the door a watchword of my ownThat shall forbid its turning-here I'll work,With earnest toil, the ransom of my years,Till Death, stern friend that cannot be denied,Shall enter noiseless, to depart with me.