Classic Poem

So, friends, you see my picture brought to end
With 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 place
Foreshadowed 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 stand
For 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 brow
So 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 took
To 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 countenance
Art does not keep, so that is turned elsewhere.

You, addle-pate with diamonds in your gift;—
You, not of God, but Babbage, clever thing
To calculate, and add, and multiply,—
And you, poor Wagling, striking baldly now
At 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 pillory
For 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 myself
Some freedoms? Yes—a painter's privilege;
To put on canvas what you would not show
If you could help the same, being ware of it.
I've made a Bandit of a bearded wretch
By 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 dress
Is a prim rainbow of proprieties,—
I let the scarlet of her soul strike through
The drab decorum, as another drew
The 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 repute
Make 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 wise
To tempt his rendering of your facial text.

And, now I think of it, your wrath assists
A project that has grown on me, of late—
For, having quartered in your haunts so long
That I have got your wickedness by heart,
What choice is left me, but an hermitage,
Where converse of the calm immortal souls
Shall 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 own
That 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.