Short Poems

The tawdry " portraits" of the Constant brand
Delight the rampant, unpictorial band
That paints its victims, when it paints at all,
Arrayed like country bumpkins at a ball
In shouting colours of a rainbow hue —
Ranging from cardinal to peacock blue.

Commerce and paint are blent in Ridgway Knight,
And Art, poor thing! in terror takes to flight.
He never startles with a fancy new,
But year by year bares bravely to the view
Some posing peasant in crude colour drest
To witch the proud pork-packers of the West.

The feeble focus of a Bisbing tells
Of pigment juggled like a " fakir's" shells.

Howe's cattle-pieces move to seemly mirth,
For sometimes they reveal such pleasing dearth
Of art pictorial that the gazer vows
A law is needed to protect the cows.

Lord Weeks is not a lord of dainty art,
His vision is perplexing, and the part
He plays with paint is obvious and sad —
In fancy fierce, in typhoid colour clad.

Where 's Bridgman of the harem houris strayed,
That even Weeks can cast into the shade?

Clairin has climbed the great Hors Concours throne,
And caters with the thought of shame unknown:
The old, good rule suffices for his ken —
If at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again.

Salute the Cause that turns a man from art
To tread official paths and please the mart
With crafty painting, raw and commonplace,
The focus shifting with each foot of space
To meet the wishes of the careless crew
That clamours for a dozen points of view.

In youthful days ere Pearce had won a place,
His Bible legends lacked of saving grace;
The aim was pious but the paint a snare,
Tho' later on he sought an ampler air,
And struck a sane and more convincing key
With " studies" that, to say the least, were free
Of Laurens' square-touch method that of late
Has roused commiseration for his fate.

" Historic" Rochegrosse daubs with lewd delight
The old, historic Harlot's painful plight;
And makes one wish, quite willing to offend,
It were his own and not bad Babylon's End .
A picture can relate itself in mind —
This failure is the unrelated kind.

When Louis Philippe reigned in Paris Town,
And taught how nerveless king may lose a crown,
Healy assaulted paint with eye severe,
And entered on his overpaid career.
Since then he's made the helpless colour flow
In one poor way for more than one poor show.

Where did De Gravesande learn to paint the light
Of laughing stars serene in summer Night?
His seaview where the salt-kissed breezes blow,
And mellowed, misty shadows faintly show,
Is like a pictured poem, pure and fair,
Singing of starshine and Sicilian air.