For Art is Nature made by Man
To Man the interpreter of God.
The Artist. LORD LYTTON (Owen Meredith).
In the elder days of Art.
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the gods see everywhere.
The Builders. H.W. LONGFELLOW.
It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize,
And to be swift is less than to be wise.
'Tis more by art, than force of numerous strokes.
Iliad, Bk. XXIII. HOMER. Trans. of POPE.
His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand;
His manners were gentle, complying, and bland;
Still born to improve us in every part,
His pencil our faces, his manners our heart.
Retaliation (Sir Joshua Reynolds). O. GOLDSMITH.
Around the mighty master came
The marvels which his pencil wrought,
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought.
Raphael. J.G. WHITTIER.
ASPIRATION.
Oh! could I throw aside these earthly bands
That tie me down where wretched mortals sigh—
To join blest spirits in celestial lands!
To Laura in Death. PETRARCH.
Happy the heart that keeps its twilight hour,
And, in the depths of heavenly peace reclined,
Loves to commune with thoughts of tender power,—
Thoughts that ascend, like angels beautiful,
A shining Jacob's ladder of the mind!
Sonnet IX. P.H. HAYNE.
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
To ——: One word is too often profaned. P.B. SHELLEY.
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
In Memoriam, I. A. TENNYSON.