IN AN ATELIER

I pray you, do not turn your head; and let your hands lie

It was a dress like this, blood-red, that Dante liked so, long ago. You don't know Dante? Never mind. He loved a lady wondrous fair

His model? Something of the kind. I wonder if she had your hair!

I wonder if she looked so meek, and was not meek at all,- my dear

I want that side-light on your cheek. He loved her, it is very

clear,

And painted her, as I paint you; but rather better on the whole. Depress your chin, yes, that will do: he was a painter of the soul!

And painted portraits, too, I think, in the Inferno- rather good! I'd make some certain critics blink if I'd his method and his mood.

Her name was - Jennie, let your glance rest there by that Majolica tray

Was Beatrice; they met by chance they met by chance, the usual way.

As you and I met, months ago, do you remember? How your feet Went crinkle-crinkle on the snow adown the long gas-lighted

street!

An instant in the drug store's glare you stood as in a golden frame!

And then I swore it then and there

down to fame.

to hand your sweetness

all this was long before

They met, and loved, and never wed

our time;

And though they died, they are not dead such endless youth

gives 'mortal rhyme!

Still walks the earth, with haughty mien, great Dante, in his

soul's distress;

And still the lovely Florentine goes lovely in her blood-red dress.

You do not understand at all? He was a poet; on his page He drew her; and though kingdoms fall, this lady lives from age to age:

A poet that means painter too, for words are colors, rightly laid;

And they outlast our brightest hue, for ochers crack and crimsons fade.

The poets - they are lucky ones! when we are thrust upon the shelves,

Our works turn into skeletons almost as quickly as ourselves; For our poor canvas peels at length, at length is prized when all is bare:

"What grace!" the critics cry, "what strength!" when neither strength nor grace is there.

Ah, Jennie, I am sick at heart, it is so little one can do,

We talk our jargon - live for art! I'd much prefer to live for

you.

How dull and lifeless colors are: you smile, and all my picture lies:

I wish that I could crush a star to make a pigment for your eyes.

Yes, child, I know I'm out of tune; the light is bad; the sky is

gray:

I'll work no more this afternoon, so lay your royal robes away. Besides, you're dreamy-hand on chin I know not what

Inot in the vein:

While I would paint Anne Boleyn, you sit there looking like Elaine.

Not like the youthful, radiant Queen, unconscious of the coming.

woe,

But rather as she might have been, preparing for the headsman's

blow.

I see! I've put you in a miff-sitting bolt upright, wrist on wrist.

How should you look? Why, dear as if - somehow

you'd just been kissed.

as if

T. B. Aldrich.

AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE

O good painter, tell me true,

Has your hand the cunning to draw
Shapes of things you never saw?
Ay? Well, here is an order for you.

Woods and cornfields a little brown,—
The picture must not be over-bright,
Yet all in the golden and gracious light
Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down.
Alway and alway, night and morn,
Woods upon woods, with fields of corn
Lying between them, not quite sere,
And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom,
When the wind can hardly find breathing-room
Under their tassels, cattle near,

Biting shorter the short green grass,
And a hedge of sumach and sassafras,
With bluebirds twittering all around-
(Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound!)
These, and the house where I was born,
Low and little, and black and old,
With children, many as it can hold,
All at the windows open wide,
Heads and shoulders clear outside,
And fair young faces all ablush:

Perhaps you may have seen, some day,
Roses crowding the self-same way,
Out of a wilding, wayside bush.

Listen closer. When you have done

With woods and cornfields and grazing herds, A lady, the loveliest ever the sun

Looked down upon, you must paint for me;
O, if I only could make you see

The clear blue eyes, the tender smile,
The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace,

The woman's soul, and the angel's face

That are beaming on me all the while!—

I need not speak these foolish words; Yet one word tells you all I would say,— She is my mother: you will agree

That all the rest may be thrown away.
Two little urchins at her knee

You must paint, sir: one like me,—
The other with a clearer brow,
And the light of his adventurous eyes
Flashing with boldest enterprise:
At ten years old he went to sea,-

God knoweth if he be living now,-
He sailed in the good ship Commodore,-
Nobody ever crossed her track

To bring us news, and she never came back.
Ah, 't is twenty long years and more
Since that old ship went out of the bay

With my great-hearted brother on her deck;
I watched him till he shrank to a speck,
And his face was toward me all the way.
Bright his hair was, a golden brown,

The time we stood at our mother's knee: That beauteous head, if it did go down, Carried sunshine into the sea!

Out in the fields one summer night
We were together, half afraid

Of the corn-leaves' rustling, and of the shade

Of the high hills, stretching so still and far,

Loitering till after the low little light

Of the candle shone through the open door,
And over the haystack's pointed top,

All of a tremble, and ready to drop,

The first half-hour, the great yellow star
That we with staring, ignorant eyes,
Had often and often watched to see
Propped and held in its place in the skies.
By the fork of a tall, red mulberry-tree,

Which close in the edge of our flax-field grew,—

Dead at the top,- just one branch full
Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool,
From which it tenderly shook the dew
Over our heads, when we came to play
In its handbreadth of shadow, day after day:-
Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore
A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs,
The other a bird, held fast by the legs
Not so big as a straw of wheat:

The berries we gave her she would n't eat,
But cried and cried, till we held her bill,
So slim and shining, to keep her still.

At last we stood at our mother's knee.
Do you think, sir, if you try,

You can paint the look of a lie?
If you can, pray have the grace
To put it solely in the face.

Of the urchin that is likest me:

I think 't was solely mine, indeed: But that's no matter,- paint it so;

The eyes of our mother (take good heed)
Looking not on the nestful of eggs,

Nor the fluttering bird, held so fast by the legs,
But straight through our faces down to our lies,
And O, with such injured, reproachful surprise!

I felt my heart bleed where that glance went, as though
A sharp blade struck through it.

You, sir, know, That you on the canvas are to repeat

Things that are fairest, things most sweet,—

Woods and cornfields and mulberry tree,

The mother, the lads, with their bird, at her knee:

But, O, that look of reproachful woe!

High as the heavens your name I'll shout,

If you paint me the picture, and leave that out.