Oh, there the pictures are, the ones the model painted -- You remember, Alice, the story in the paper? Just a common model, and she took to painting, And here's what she did, with the paint hardly dried. Tame pictures, aren't they, after the life she led -- Yes they do, all of them, you can't tell @3me!@1 I'd know it just to see the way she met that artist, The young figure-painter in the hall outside. Yes, she's the one -- I told you as we passed them -- Exquisite and poised and serene, did you see? And dressed so severely, but that's a pose, perhaps; You can't be certain with a gift for posing so! Surely you noticed, when she greeted the painter, How curtly he was, almost a little cold? Prudence, I wonder, or good taste in public? Underneath their manners who knows what they know! That severe gown she wore, for her to wear it Was either too modest or a bit overbold, With her lovely figure, and knowing she's a model; Better just what she is than a false restraint. What a haunting face she has -- calmness and keenness And underneath, passion, if I can read faces; Passion -- and these tame pictures! Would you think She'd have chose landscapes, the first thing to paint? Landscape, for me, is background for living; Stirring things happen, if you like, in handsome places, But happen to the actors -- flesh and blood's the play, Just how the stage is set isn't much to me. This woman now, with her spirit for succeeding, Reaching for life, I think, and taking when it comes, These tame landscapes of hers are only background, She's left out of the picture, the part I came to see. Mary my sister, you know her modern notions, Mary says a proper life stifles and benumbs; The kind of a life I spoke of she says, isn't scandal It's only what we'd all do, if the way were clear. Talking just this morning, reading in the paper, We envy the model, she said, and so we ought; Or why this crowd that presses toward her pictures? Don't suppose it's landscape that brings them all here! Mary says, most of us think just by turning Round and round we'll come at last on a living thrill, Though we'd be too dizzy, she says, when we found it, Worn to a dullness too dense to feel it then. Only the brave ones who seek life early, Every nerve quivering and the heart alert, Not wait, but look for it, she says, rather headlong, Only they have lived at all, or can live again. Artists are the folk she means, the kind that fling them Boldly on life, the pleasure and the hurt; Every day's a canvas -- if the work's a failure, Scrape the hardening colors off, paint the dream afresh. If you never paint it, she says, if the dream falls Wrecked all your days, and the shining fades at last, Mary says it's something to know you've tried and missed it -- She'd rather be a thwarted soul than just tidy flesh. That's the reason, Mary thinks, one yields her loveliness To the painter's vision, unveils her utmost grace, Marries her beauty to his soul, not his body, So completes the beauty that she almost is. There she stands lifted immortal above herself, Proper things fall away, this cannot go; Here once she lived -- could the painter live more? Here her dream stays -- is it less than his? Mary can talk so. But if that's living, What's landscape after that, I'd like to know? Did she live deeply, and taste the thrill we miss, Rise from the rut the daily habit wore, And are these the picture, then, of herself immortal? Immortal -- and these the best she could do! Why landscapes, I say; who wants the wall-paper On Hero's room, with Leander at the door? And, I said to Mary, that's a wise notion Of lovliness to kindle at, and visions coming true; I'm no model, but I know human nature, And they can't be a vision every time they pose; They must be immodest when the dream fails them, Artist and model can't be much to sing of then -- He's just a painter drawing heads and bodies, She's just a woman standing without her clothes. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A PSALM OF TRAVEL by GEORGE SANTAYANA THE DIORAMA PAINTER AT THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY by KAREN SWENSON THE RAIN by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES TO THE MOON (1) by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, BY OUR OWN TOM DALY by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS PICTURESQUE; A FRAGMENT by JOHN AIKIN LOVE'S NEW PHILOSOPHY by PHILIP AYRES ON SEEING AN OFFICER'S WIDOW DISTRACTED - ARREARS OF PENSION by MARY BARBER |