A sun-kissed field of golden, billowed grain
Is wrought in Cazin's most romantic vein;
That lyric vein informed of art's repose,
And moist with beauty as a dew-drenched rose.

O Red Rag of the Legion! cheap but fair,
How Merit flings thee to the startled air!
Thy function in this world is manifold,
The soldier loves thee, and the bourgeois bold;
But there is none that loves thee quite so much
As brushman putting Fortune to the touch.

The Raffailli sketches, coarse yet quaint,
Are like a Charles Keene black-and-white in paint.
His Dannat " study" has official grace,
The sitter's Red Rag proudly in its place
And blabbing reclame at the button-hole —
The focussed symbol of a Gallic dole.

The style of Dannat seems to shift and veer
And vanish like the snows of yester-year;
Until at last the jesters all expect
To see him try each spring a new " effect."

The foggy Carriere mocks the Maris scheme
Of misty colour, faint as fleeting dream.
What is with Maris an authentic trait,
Copied by Carriere ranks as second-rate.

The works of Matthÿès Maris are a kind
To linger in the cloisters of the mind.
His dear, dream-faces call up love-led days
When winsome maidens dwelt on hidden ways,
And stainless Faith transfigured hall and bow'r —
The old gray years when knighthood was in flow'r,
And the Red Swineherd wound his elfin horn,
And casements oped " in fairy-lands forlorn."

Here's Muhrman with his landscapes of the Heath,
Gray skies above, poetic scenes beneath.
Why does he linger on the white chalk shores
Where the Pecksniffian Ruskinite adores
The musty " moral" tale, and counts as dross
All paint that does not preach or teach, or toss
A sop to virtue? Has he turned aside
By Happy Hampstead ever to abide?
One knows not, yet 't were well to name in rhyme
A pure pictorial painter of his time,
Whose landscapes with the solemn sorcery glow
That 's born of wistful sunsets fading slow.

Ten feeble efforts to depict the nude
Are titled Music , as though colour crude
Had aught to do with rhythm, as though name
Divorced from style could bring a bungler fame.
The work that lacks of beauty, lacks of thought —
In paint, as words, real worth is beauty-fraught.

Cecelia Beaux affects the Sargent style,
And proud Invention passes with a smile.
As Cassatt apes Chavannes, and Gardner seeks
To trace the arid Bouguereau's angel freaks,
So Sears recalls the Thayer schemes, and lo!
The " lady artists" lightly come and go.

John Sargent has a magic with the brush
That puts the common painter to the blush.
His method is so large and sound and free
It rings the changes of a lyric glee.
To pose dramatic and to style intense
He weds imaginative colour sense,
And turns off Pictures with a dash and ease
That please the amateur and expert please.
A rare conjunction, such as Corot knew
Who charmed the Many as he charmed the Few.
Sargent has never catered for the mart.
A thing to say! the man respects his art.