Classic Poem

To Ruskin, art's a preachment, " false" or " true" —
Not an " arrangement" of enticing hue.
That is his basic blunder, and it breeds
A mirthful medley in his painting-creeds.
" Select naught and neglect naught" is the rule
He fixes for the brushmen of his school;
And no more artless message could be brought
To mark the range and limit of his thought.

A painting fails of beauty when it shows
The unrelated thing in touch or pose;
For every detail on the canvas shown
Must wed the wooing harmony of tone.

He's an atomic critic, and he tries
To laud atomic painting to the skies;
(Until emotion softly intervenes
And then — he lauds synthetic Turner's scenes).
He worships detail, and his eye delights
In unpictorial, microscopic sights.

A coloured photograph to him is " fair"
When wrought with " conscience," " soul" and " loving care";
For, with his British view-point, well he knows
The scenic value of the " moral" pose.
What pleases him he brands as " moral right,"
And rates " immoral" all that shocks his sight.

His theories of art from first to last
Are of an insular and cockney cast.
The landscape revolution wrought in France,
That shook the art world with its fresh romance,
Rouses in Ruskin no receptive strain;
But only cold, contemptuous disdain.
He does not know to-day, for good or ill,
The French can paint a landscape with some skill.
This narrow culture clearly serves to show
The Nonconformist bigot Britons know.

And yet, when all is said, of praise or blame,
His Paintless Pictures may safe-guard his fame;
The old man eloquent, his writing glows
With precious patches of alluring prose;
And when he treats of landscape, now and then
Delightful lyrics ripple from his pen,
And airy visions glad the mental sight
That none could paint, and only Ruskin write.