Classic Poem

On Some Portraits by Sargent

The Royal Academy has been much maligned
By modern aesthetes . . . For myself, I find
More motives to applaud than to condemn
An edifice so apposite . . . ahem! . . .
Climbing the stairway in a cloud of chatter,
I am pledged to practise cogitant concision
And to reject all parenthetic matter
While ambulating round the Exhibition.

At this deaf-mute Reception where the Great
(With snobs whose wealth could wheedle them their places)
Survive in envied Sargentry (a state
No more achievable by mundane faces),
Putting aside enigmas of technique, —
In calm cynosural canvases I seek
Some psycho-coefficient unconfessed . . .
A glum (though lingually-exempted) guest,
I analyse the output; which includes
Complacent persons opulently poised
In unawareness that their names are noised
In highbrow cliques as " psychologic nudes".

If Sargent could have called his soul his own
And had not been the hireling of the Rich,
There'd not be many portraits now re-shown
Of ladies lovelified to ball-room pitch;
Nor would these multiplied admirers crush
To crane their necks at sempiternal hostesses
Whom by the brilliant boredom of his brush
He silenced into fashion-dated ghostesses . . .
Nor would my soul feel quite so mocked and chilly
When I rejoin plebeian Piccadilly.English