Classic Poem

Observe a Salon of Official aim,
The goal and glory of the gentle game
Where interest of Subject takes the place
Of dainty treatment and artistic grace;
Where medal-chasers, void of style and tone,
Flaunt failure with the sense of shame unknown.
A Salon that, despite repute afar,
Is but a monstrous middle-class Bazaar;
With pigment wasted, canvas cast away,
" Butchered to make a bourgeois holiday."

Advancing imbecility is plain,
The worse comes to the worst in vulgar vein.
For one success, a picture sure and strong,
A hundred " custom-made" intention throng.

Metallic landscapes cry aloud for light,
And pulseless portraits leer from left and right.
Mock sentiment and anecdote abound,
Legend and bathos scattered lightly round;
While studio wantons, graceless, coarse and crude,
Glare into space with gestures bold and lewd;
The florid type the " soulful" brushman knows,
That serves, to trance the mob, in fever'd pose.