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, Fanny, 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 am out of tune;
The light is bad; the sky is gray:
I paint no more this afternoon,
So lay your royal gear away.

Besides, you're moody-chin on hand-
I know not what-not in the vein-
Not like Anne Bullen, sweet and bland:
You sit there smiling in disdain.

Not like the Tudor's radiant Queen,
Unconscious of the coming woe,
But rather as she might have been,
Preparing for the headsman's blow.
So, I have put you in a miff-
Sitting bolt-upright, wrist on wrist.
How should you look? Why, dear, as if—
Somehow as if you'd just been kissed!

On Lynn Terrace

All day to watch the blue wave curl and break,
All night to hear it plunging on the shore—
In this sea-dream such draughts of life I take,
I cannot ask for more.

Behind me lie the idle life and vain,

The task unfinished, and the weary hours; That long wave softly bears me back to Spain And the Alhambra's towers!

Once more I halt in Andalusian Pass,

To list the mule-bells jingling on the height; Below, against the dull esparto grass,

The almonds glimmer white.

Huge gateways, wrinkled, with rich grays and browns,
Invite my fancy, and I wander through
The gable-shadowed, zigzag streets of towns
The world's first sailors knew.

Or, if I will, from out this thin sea-haze
Low-lying cliffs of lovely Calais rise;
Or yonder, with the pomp of olden days,
Venice salutes my eyes.

Or some gaunt castle lures me up its stair;
I see, far off, the red tiled hamlets shine,
And catch, through slits of windows here and there,
Blue glimpses of the Rhine.

Again I pass Norwegian fjord and fell,

And through bleak wastes to where the sunset's fires Light up the white-walled Russian citadel,

The Kremlin's domes and spires.

And now I linger in green English lanes,
By garden-plots of rose and heliotrope;
And now I face the sudden pelting rains

On some lone Alpine slope.

Now at Tangier, among the packed bazaars,
I saunter, and the merchants at the doors
Smile, and entice me: here are jewels like stars,
And curved knives of the Moors;

Cloths of Damascus, strings of amber dates;
What would Howadji-silver, gold, or stone?
Prone on the sun-scorched plain outside the gates
The camels make their moan.

All this is mine, as I lie dreaming here,
High on the windy terrace, day by day;
And mine the children's laughter, sweet and clear,
Ringing across the bay.

For me the clouds; the ships sail by for me;

For me the petulant sea-gull takes its flight; And mine the tender moonrise on the sea,

And hollow caves of night.

On an Intaglio Head of Minerva

Beneath the warrior's helm, behold
The flowing tresses of the woman!
Minerva, Pallas, what you will—
A winsome creature, Greek or Roman.

Minerva? No! 't is some sly minx
In cousin's helmet masquerading;
If not then Wisdom was a dame
For sonnets and for serenading!

I thought the goddess cold, austere,
Not made for love's despairs and blisses:
Did Pallas wear her hair like that?

Was Wisdom's mouth so shaped for kisses?

The Nightingale should be her bird,
And not the Owl, big-eyed and solemn:
How very fresh she looks, and yet

She's older far than Trajan's Column!

The magic hand that carved this face,
And set this vine-work round it running,

Perhaps ere mighty Phidias wrought

Had lost its subtle skill and cunning.

Who was he? Was he glad or sad,

Who knew to carve in such a fashion?

Perchance he graved the dainty head

For some brown girl that scorned his passion.

Perchance, in some still garden-place,
Where neither fount nor tree to-day is,
He flung the jewel at the feet

Of Phryne, or perhaps 't was Lais.

But he is dust; we may not know
His happy or unhappy story:
Nameless and dead these centuries,

His work outlives him-there's his glory!

Both man and jewel lay in earth
Beneath a lava-buried city;

The countless summers came and went
With neither haste, nor hate, nor pity.

Years blotted out the man, but left
The jewel fresh as any blossom,

Till some Visconti dug it up—

To rise and fall on Mabel's bosom!

Oh nameless brother! see how Time

Your gracious handiwork has guarded:
See how your loving, patient art
Has come, at last, to be rewarded.

Who would not suffer slights of men,
And pangs of hopeless passion also,

To have his carven agate-stone

On such a bosom rise and fall so!