Short Poems

The Raffailli sketches, coarse yet quaint,
Are like a Charles Keene black-and-white in paint.
His Dannat " study" has official grace,
The sitter's Red Rag proudly in its place
And blabbing reclame at the button-hole —
The focussed symbol of a Gallic dole.

The style of Dannat seems to shift and veer
And vanish like the snows of yester-year;
Until at last the jesters all expect
To see him try each spring a new " effect."

The foggy Carriere mocks the Maris scheme
Of misty colour, faint as fleeting dream.
What is with Maris an authentic trait,
Copied by Carriere ranks as second-rate.

The works of Matthÿès Maris are a kind
To linger in the cloisters of the mind.
His dear, dream-faces call up love-led days
When winsome maidens dwelt on hidden ways,
And stainless Faith transfigured hall and bow'r —
The old gray years when knighthood was in flow'r,
And the Red Swineherd wound his elfin horn,
And casements oped " in fairy-lands forlorn."

Ten feeble efforts to depict the nude
Are titled Music , as though colour crude
Had aught to do with rhythm, as though name
Divorced from style could bring a bungler fame.
The work that lacks of beauty, lacks of thought —
In paint, as words, real worth is beauty-fraught.

Cecelia Beaux affects the Sargent style,
And proud Invention passes with a smile.
As Cassatt apes Chavannes, and Gardner seeks
To trace the arid Bouguereau's angel freaks,
So Sears recalls the Thayer schemes, and lo!
The " lady artists" lightly come and go.

America may boast two men of sight,
Two painters of supreme pictorial might —
Whistler and Sargent, who have clearly wrought
Serene inventions of artistic thought.

George Inness is en route to happy Fame
With restful landscapes of romantic aim.
The vapour of the verdure bathes his work,
And tender half-tones in the foliage lurk.
He knows the hour, the season and the scene
When Lady Nature dons her darkest green.

A slop-pot painted with artistic grace
Is greater than an angel commonplace.

Lerolle a Flight to Egypt has essay'd,
And does his best the subject to degrade.
The girls who pose as angels in the sky
Reveal the value of this tradesman's eye;
Feeble in colour, false to art and fact,
They fit, in black-and-white, " a moral tract"
Such as fond parents give to little boys
To make them weep and blight their youthful joys.