Art

Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.

Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages, And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages, It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

All perform their tragic play, There struts Hamlet, there is Lear.

He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrowbone.

Speech after long silence; it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead… That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant.

The intellect of man is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work, And if it take the second must refuse A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. 6

We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush, We are but critics, or but half create.

I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world’s eyes As though they’d wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there’s more enterprise In walking naked.

For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.

I said, “A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught. Better go down upon your marrow-bones And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones.”

The Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It’s pretty, but is it Art?”

When Earth’s last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it—lie down for an eon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew.

Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O: vowels, Someday I shall recount your latent births. 10

A wandering minstrel I— And dreamy lullaby!

Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia, Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts, That matter of Troy and Achilles’ wrath, and Aeneas’, Odysseus’ wanderings, Placard “Removed” and “To Let” on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus.

In creating, the only hard thing’s to begin; A grass-blade’s no easier to make than an oak.

But not without men’s hands: He could not make Antonio Stradivari’s violins Without Antonio.

Rafael made a century of sonnets.

We’re made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted—better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that.

Less is more. 3

The Savior at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off.

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive.