Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONATA: 1. ALLEGRO, by JOHN ERSKINE



Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SONATA: 1. ALLEGRO, by                    
First Line: You've seen her things? I saw them yesterday
Last Line: All on the line -- and landscapes, every one!
Subject(s): Art & Artists; Models


You've seen her things? I saw them yesterday.
My model's landscapes. That's the way to climb!
There on that box she stood, a year ago,
With no more skill than clothes -- to pass the time,
Asking me just what art was, anyway.
So from the hour I hired her she began;
I told her what the pose meant -- in a word,
Leda's first dim suspicion of the swan.
"Leda who?" she asked, mounting the box;
"Suspicious, was she? What did Leda fear?"
Well, I was turning over in my mind
Phrases discreet to make the legend clear,
When my white swan, her partner, caught her eye,
Droopy a bit for a god so passionate-hearted;
"And who's the taxidermic bird?" -- Said I,
"We'll begin work!" And that's the way we started.
But then, you know, that puzzling face of hers
Somehow forbade the picture to unfold;
Always her face -- her whiteness, line and tint
Were nothing to the thoughts that face half told.
Should I give up, and send the girl away,
Or drop the swan and just paint Leda's head?
Then, without breaking from the pose, she laughed,
And, "Why do artists use a model?" she said.
Forward, no doubt, and ignorant, to be sure,
Yet if she ever was to understand,
Some one must tell her; so, while painting on,
I put together simple truths offhand --
That all we artists aim at, is no more
Than to distinguish body from its dress,
That fashion covers life, but underneath,
Indifferent to time, is loveliness.
Statesmen we carved in togas once, because
No one would make eternal a tail coat,
And yet, better the unwrapped man, if men
Stripped to themselves were beautiful. That note
I struck for humor, but she frowned a little,
Puzzled; so I began at her once more,
Told her what Carlyle said about the world's
Devoutly worshipping the old clothes it wore,
And afterwards by luck how Whistler painting
The rough dyspeptic's portrait made him wroth
By bringing out his coat, a handsome blue,
So that the picture centers in the cloth.
"You mean, Whistler made a mistake?" "Why, no,
Yet Carlyle wanted, why should one refuse?
Just Carlyle painted, not his nakedness,
Of course -- the naked Carlyle, if you choose.
Now when we paint the nude --" "The nude!" she cried,
"I meant, why any model?" "Oh! -- You see,
We start from something when the mind creates;
Nothing from nothing, nature and art agree.
Starting from beauty so, the painter's eye
Finds something better than it gazes on,
As when I look at you, for Leda there --"
She murmured, "I was thinking of this stuffed swan."
Without a word, almost, she came next time,
Ready at once. "Some work to-day, thank God!
Beauty for painting is not the kind that talks!"
But on her way to pose she turned and stood
Before the easel, studied it up and down,
Cool as a critic you've invited in.
At last she took her place, still meditating,
And I seized brush and palette to begin,
A bit put out. -- "Why, here, you've changed the pose,
That's not the one I gave you!" "No, it's not.
You like the first one better?" "If you please!
Get it again and keep it to the dot!"
Two seconds, and she had it. But that morning
I wasn't in the vein. I'll frankly say
I rather liked that graceful pose of hers,
But couldn't have it smuggled in that way.
Well, why be proud? Next time I'd ask her for it.
But next time she got up there, cool and bold,
And with a wicked smile, "Which pose to-day,
The old or new?" Said I, "Of course, the old!"
She came again more docile. For a while
I painted, better humored by the minute,
Then, since she'd learned her place, why not unbend,
If that new pose had really something in it?
"I've an idea -- that other pose you thought of
Won't do for Leda, but before it quite
Slips from your mind, a subject comes to me
It might be useful for -- I think it might."
That spoiled her. Only once she came again,
Took the new pose as though that point were settled,
Then in a helpful voice, "I'd paint the light
More from the center." Well that had me nettled!
What did she know of lighting? -- for that matter,
Of posing either? I knew she was hopeless then;
She knew it too, I guess -- I had a brief
Note the next day, she could not pose again.
Some months at least, and then the rumor spread
My model was turned painter -- line and tone
Flowed from her brush clear genius, her friends said;
Then the great news, her pictures would be shown.
It seemed an outrage that a girl whose skill
Was merely to be looked at, should arrive
By some vagary of her idle will
Where artists trained and ripe, for all they strive
Too often, wrecked and baffled, fail to come.
Yet she had wit, and -- well, why not? -- from me
She may have caught some training; else from whom?
Genius, no doubt, learns that way, casually.
Well, I would go and see how genius works
That picks success up with such small ado,
What simple paths she hit on, saving steps,
And how transmuted my own ways came through.
So yesterday I went, and in the hall
Met her, as self-contained -- you'd hardly know
Our story, just to see us there;
We were two masters, old hands at a show.
She led me to the pictures? Not at all!
No mention of them. I found my way alone,
Following the crowd. And there they were, the six,
All on the line -- and landscapes, every one!





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