AT THE PRIVATE VIEW.
Yes, that's my picture. "Great," you say?
The crowd says it will make my name—
A name I'd gladly throw away
For a certain unseen star's pure ray.
I want success I've missed—not fame.
You see the mother kneeling there,
The child who cries for bread in vain.
The hard straw bed, the window bare,
The rags, the rat, the broken chair,
The misery and cold and pain.
But what you don't see—(never will!)—
Is what was there while yet I drew
The lines—which are not drawn so ill,
Put on the colours—worthy still
Of praise from critics such as you.
I used to paint all day, to pour
My soul out as I painted—see
There, to the life, the rotten floor,
The rags, the damp, the broken door,
For those your world will honour me.
But, though if here my models were,
You should not find a line drawn wrong,
Yet there is food for my despair,
But half my picture's finished fair;
Words without music are not song.
Sometimes I almost caught the tune,
Then changing lights across the sky,
Turned gray morn to red afternoon,
I had to drop my brush too soon,
Lay the transfigured palette by.
That woman did not kneel on there,
When once my back was turned, I know,
She used to leave the broken chair
And show her face and its despair:
Oh—if I could have seen her so!
About her neck child-arms clung close,
Close to her heart the child-heart crept,
My room could tell you—if it chose.
There was a picture, then—God knows!
And I—who might have painted—slept.
Then when birds bade the world prepare
For dawn—ere yet the East grew wan,
She stepped back to the canvas there,
Wearing the look she will not wear
When eyes like yours and mine look on.
And when the mother kneeled once more,
While birds grew shrill, and shadows faint,
The child's white face the one look bore,
Which to my eyes it never wore,
Which I would give my soul to paint.
Hung, as you see—upon the line—
But when I laid the varnish on
And left my two—Fate laughed, malign,
"Farewell to that last hope of thine,
Thy chance of painting them is gone!"