Classic Poem

For many years the prints of London Town
Have treated " Jimmie" Whistler as a clown,
While Yankee journals tailed the cockney van
And showed him as a snobbish, vain old man.
He 's all of that; but he is something more,
And years to be his prestige shall restore.
When " Jimmie" sleeps beneath the daisied sod —
In peace, at last, with man if not with God —
Then we 'll forget the " Jimmie" whom we know,
The vulgar " Jimmie," posed for public show,
Who proves in ways at war with wit and art
That workers and their work are things apart.
And we 'll remember Whistler, that clear type
Of clean achievement, serious and ripe;
Of art successes so sustained and true
They tend to boggle Ruskin and his crew
Who yet maintain — as Turner lovers can! —
A painter is, perforce, a gentleman.

'Twas Whistler who, with vision that transcends,
Pressed on serenely where Velasquez ends,
And took the method of the Japanese —
Their shy suggestion and seductive ease —
And shaped for curious Nineteenth-century needs
The colour schemes that only genius breeds.
Their lyricism, perfect yet restrained,
Reveals what goals by reticence are gained.
His etchings and his lithographs beguile
With strange, mysterious subtleties of style;
They take you to high places where, below,
The wavering lights and shadows come and go.
His portraits have a dignity and grace
Such as the Madrid master loved to trace.
His nocturnes and his symphonies invite
With haunting melodies of liquid light
That will transmit their charms to other days
For other Ruskins to refuse them praise.