Classic and Contemporary Poetry
AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE, by ALICE CARY Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Oh, good painter, tell me true Last Line: If you paint me the picture, and leave that out. Subject(s): Mothers | ||||||||
OH, good painter, tell me true, Has your hand the cunning to draw Shapes of things that you never saw? Aye? Well, here is an order for you. Woods and corn fields, a little brown, -- The picture must not be over-bright, -- Yet all in the golden and gracious light Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down. Alway and alway, night and morn, Woods upon woods, with fields of corn Lying between them, not quite sere, And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom, When the wind can hardly find breathing-room Under their tassels, -- cattle near, Biting shorter the short green grass, And a hedge of sumach and sassafras, With bluebirds twittering all around, -- (Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound!) -- These, and the house where I was born, Low and little, and black and old, With children, many as it can hold, All at the windows, open wide, -- Heads and shoulders clear outside, And fair young faces all ablush: Perhaps you may have seen, some day, Roses crowding the self-same way, Out of a wilding, wayside bush. Listen closer. When you have done With woods and corn fields and grazing herds, A lady, the loveliest ever the sun Looked down upon you must paint for me: Oh, if I only could make you see The clear blue eyes, the tender smile, The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace, The woman's soul, and the angel's face That are beaming on me all the while, I need not speak these foolish words: Yet one word tells you all I would say, -- She is my mother: you will agree That all the rest may be thrown away. Two little urchins at her knee You must paint, sir: one like me, -- The other with a clearer brow, And the light of his adventurous eyes Flashing with boldest enterprise: At ten years old he went to sea, -- God knoweth if he be living now, -- He sailed in the good ship Commodore, Nobody ever crossed her track To bring us news, and she never came back. Ah, it is twenty long years and more Since that old ship went out of the bay With my great-hearted brother on her deck: I watched him till he shrank to a speck, And his face was toward me all the way. Bright his hair was, a golden brown, The time we stood at our mother's knee: That beauteous head, if it did go down, Carried sunshine into the sea! Out in the fields one summer night We were together, half afraid Of the corn-leaves' rustling, and of the shade Of the high hills, stretching so still and far, -- Loitering till after the low little light Of the candle shone through the open door, And over the hay-stack's pointed top, All of a tremble and ready to drop, The first half-hour, the great yellow star, That we, with staring, ignorant eyes, Had often and often watched to see Propped and held in its place in the skies By the fork of a tall red mulberry-tree, Which close in the edge of our flax-field grew, -- Dead at the top, -- just one branch full Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool, From which it tenderly shook the dew Over our heads, when we came to play In its hand-breadth of shadow, day after day. Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs, -- The other, a bird, held fast by the legs, Not so big as a straw of wheat: The berries we gave her she would n't eat, But cried and cried, till we held her bill, So slim and shining, to keep her still. At last we stood at our mother's knee. Do you think, sir, if you try, You can paint the look of a lie? If you can, pray have the grace To put it solely in the face Of the urchin that is likest me: I think 't was solely mine, indeed: But that's no matter, -- paint it so; The eyes of our mother -- (take good heed) -- Looking not on the nestful of eggs, Nor the fluttering bird, held so fast by the legs, But straight through our faces down to our lies, And, oh, with such injured, reproachful surprise! I felt my heart bleed where that glance went, as though A sharp blade struck through it. You, sir, know That you on the canvas are to repeat Things that are fairest, things most sweet, -- Woods and corn fields and mulberry-tree, -- The mother, -- the lads, with their bird, at her knee: But, oh, that look of reproachful woe! High as the heavens your name I'll shout, If you paint me the picture, and leave that out. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MY MOTHER'S HANDS by ANDREW HUDGINS CONTINENT'S END by ROBINSON JEFFERS IN THE 25TH YEAR OF MY MOTHER'S DEATH by JUDY JORDAN THE PAIDLIN' WEAN by ALEXANDER ANDERSON BLASTING FROM HEAVEN by PHILIP LEVINE |
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