ARS IMMORTALIS
BETSEY, when all the stalwarts left
Us women to our tasks befitting,
Your little fingers, far from deft,
Coped for an arduous week with knitting;
And, though the meekness of your hair
Drooped o'er the task disarmed my strictures,
The Army gained when in despair
You dropped its socks to paint it pictures.
I, knowing well your guileless brush,
Urged that there wanted something subtler
To put Meissonier to the blush
And snatch the bays from Lady Butler;
And so your skies retained their blue,
Nor reddened with the wrath of nations,
To prove at least one artist knew
Her public and her limitations.
A dozen warriors far away
Craved of your skill to keep them posted,
With coloured pictures day by day,
In aught of note their birthplace boasted;
Hence these "Arriving Refugees"
(Cheerful in burnt sienna) hurry
To soothe your uncle's hours of ease
In some congested hut in Surrey.
I hear that Nurse's David gets
(His valour is already French's)
Your "Market" with the cigarettes
His sister forwards to the trenches;
This "Cat" (for Rupert in the East),
Limned in its moments of inertia,
You send that he may show the beast
To its progenitors in Persia.
Daily your brush depicts a home
Such as our duller pens are mute on;
Squanders Vermilion, Lake and Chrome
And Prussian Blue—that furious Teuton
Paper beneath your fingers calls
For forms and figures to divide it,
Colours and cock-eyed capitals
And kisses cruciform to hide it.
Till brushes sucked and laid apart,
And candles lit and daylight dying
And you asleep, your works of art
Ranged on the mantelpiece and drying—
We elders (older when you're gone)
Muse on our country's gains and losses ...
Ah, Betsey, is it you alone
Who send your kisses shaped like crosses?