Short Poems

Love thy neighbor, to Christ be leal!
Crush him never with iron-heel,
Though in the dust he 's lying!
All the living responsive await
Love with power to recreate,
Needing alone the trying.

The Valley Spirit never dies
It is named the Mysterious Female.
And the Door way of the Mysterious Female
Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang
It is there within us all the while;
Draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry.

They shall conquer who become
Chasm-leaping flashes, spirits self-transcendent —
Transmitters of the harmonies of honour
Breaking familial from the wasted Earth.

Thro' open door comes hint of finer grace
As budding April bares her tender face;
And open roads invite to open fields,
To all the witchery that Springtime yields
When the Arch Artist tries the earth and sky
With colour harmonies that glad the eye.
O Lady Nature! how they libel thee,
These men of paint who never help us see!

The gay Alphonse who trims a beard with grace —
And trails the taint of garlic in one's face —
Supplies a card to patrons of his chair
With " artist" graved thereon in letters fair;
The whitewash painter is an " artist," too,
And so 's the hasty lad who limns the shoe;
Yes! all are " artists," every Jack and John,
And so the pretty game goes lightly on!

George Hitchcock's tulips meet no more the view,
He's gone to hunt " fresh woods and pastures new;"
Gone to paint Virgins for the cockney pit —
Fat saints of shining halos that don't fit.

The word maternal has the pow'r to thrill.
Maternal scenes in paint need little skill;
But, when presented artless, bland and calm,
How on the orphan soul the sight sheds balm!
Miss Klumpke can these mother-scenes reveal
That make an artist-orphan retch and reel.

A glaring light, a row of old tree-trunks,
And pious manikins that pose as monks,
Make up a painting of a style and tone
As good as any that Du Mond has shown.
O sweet " religious art," thou pretext tame,
What crimes artistic flourish in thy name!

Nine feeble figures, of an equal length,
Depicted " standing out" with frightful strength,
Reveal how Walter Gay, by methods plain,
Can cater for the mob in easy vein.

Rosalie Bonheur, of the Van Marcke touch,
Could never paint too often nor too much
To please the traders of the busy mart
Who deal in names but never deal in art.
Her " soulful" goats of grim, metallic hue,
On giddy mountain-tops of Reckitt's blue,
Still charm the crowd as when, in other days,
De Goncourt gave her of his painful praise.