A COCKNEY RHAPSODY
[A critic in the Daily News accuses artists generally of ignorance in their treatment of rural subjects, and declares that nearly every picture of work in the hay or harvest field is incorrect.]
Come revel with me in the country's delights,
Its rapturous pleasures, its marvellous sights;
No landscape of common or garden I praise,
But Nature's strange charms that the painter pourtrays.
No summer begins there, and spring never ends,
It mingles with autumn, with winter it blends;
Its primroses bloom when the barley is ripe,
Amid its red apples the nightingales pipe.
There often the shadow falls southward at noon,
And sunrise is hailed by the pale crescent moon,
The sun sets at will in the east or the west,
In the grove where the cuckoo is building her nest.
There the milkmaid sits down to the left of the cow,
In harvest they sow, and in haytime they plough;
While mowers, in attitudes gladsome and blythe,
Impossible antics perform with the scythe.
There huntsmen in June after foxes may roam,
And horses unbridled go champing with foam;
From torrents by winter fierce swollen and high,
The proud salmon leaps in pursuit of the fly.
Ah Nature! it's little—I own for my part—
I know of your face save as mirrored in art;
Yet, vainly shall critics begrudge me that charm,
For a fellow can paint without learning to farm.
