Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DIVINE PORTRAITURE, by MARCUS S. C. RICKARDS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DIVINE PORTRAITURE, by                    
First Line: An artist painted a fair scene
Last Line: Till beauty overpowers each taint.
Subject(s): Beauty; Earth; Grief; Love; Soul; World; Sorrow; Sadness


AN artist painted a fair scene
To nature true, and human life;
His aim, to picture one serene
Mid sorrow and tempestuous strife:
Rare genius blent with subtle art
The due expression to impart.

I marked the toil, I scanned the whole,
A stately form, a noble face
That mirrored a majestic soul
Whose truth is fused with love and grace, --
A Heaven-wrought master, who commands
The elements mid which he stands.

I may not watch His Art Divine
Nor haunt His awful Studio,
Who schemes and fashions me and mine
Mid this environment of woe;
Yet must He His design fulfil
With closer pains and ampler skill.

A soul's pure visage blazing forth,
As perfected it views dark Earth,
The haunt of pain, and guilt and wrath,
Yet planned for a Diviner Birth:
This must employ His pencil, true
To amplest claim of form and hue;

A lofty visage, as of one
That loves the good, nor scorns the bad,
Who, struggling like the warrior sun
Thro' evil mists, would make all glad:
A God's reserve this fitly tasks,
No marvel that the work He masks;

For, saw we all, we might begin
To mourn that we were shown so much --
The wiping out, the putting in,
The glowing stroke, the subtle touch:
Oft mid the changes we might fail
To hold that grandeur could prevail.

Ah, faithless! to mistrust the Love,
To doubt the judgment, skill, foresight,
That limns each feature from above,
And so transfigures wrong to right:
His pencil lingers o'er the saint,
Till beauty overpowers each taint.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net