POETRY.

PAINT AND INK.

To C. W. F.

You take a brush, and I take a pen : You mix bright colours, I use black ink : You cover a canvas, you first of men; I write on a sheet for a scribbler meet : Well, a contrast's a contrast : I will not shrink.

First you compose : a line's grand sweep, A break, a blend, a guide for our eyes : You've a tone to settle, a curve to keep, An impression to catch, new tints to match, And a lesson behind it surely lies.

And every touch of your busy brush, And every scrape of your palette-knife, Each squeeze of the tube whence the pigments gush, Each rub of your thumb, helps the whole become A living page from the scroll of life.

There's a landscape, a face, which displays—you know it—

A fact, a fancy, a thought, a dream, Which the many miss ; so, my picture-poet,

You catch a part not the whole—that's art—

And fix it for ever : a simpler theme For a man to grasp at, conceive, remember, Than that which you saw and which we see not : There's your "Bathing Girl" and your "Bleak December," Which you paint and exhibit for fools to gibbet : You wrote the play, but God gave the plot.

And we in the pit have caught the meaning You caught, or so much as you saved for us ; But here I perceive you intervening, I hear your stricture : "A picture's a picture: Colour and form :" well ! come, discuss.

Is there nothing but colour and form ? no soul?

A judicious blend, an arrangement clever : Reds and blues : lines, curves : and is that the whole ?

No hint designed of the truth behind : Just a thing of beauty, a joy for ever ?

I think you are wronging yourself, my friend, And the noble craft that you ply so well : For colour and form have a certain end, And composition ; or else ambition Were better bestowed than on paint : you tell New truths to us; draw for us morals old From what seemed to have no moral at all : And all's not done when your picture's sold, Ner when you're R.A., at a future day, And your picture glows on a palace wall.

To see, and to paint, and to know at sight How much wants painting, how much neglect, Is a noble function, I know : you're right : But by Nature's laws there is never a cause That does not or cannot produce effect.

And, to point the contrast, and draw the moral, I, too, with my bumbler art aspire To a name which I hope you will not quarrel To see me claim : to the noble name Of an artist: in truth I know no higher.

But the metres I choose, and the rules I keep, And the lilt of the verses I write for sport, And the rhythm of lines that have made you sleep, And the style of my prose, which, goodness knows, Might grow far better and still fall short ;— All these, were they better, or even free From faults, would never enable you In the scribbler a brother-in-arms to see, In the noble fray which you fight to-day For the good, the beautiful, and the true. I've thoughts to interpret and truths to teach, I've an unread lesson at first to read, Then to state so much of as e'er can reach The brain of the man in the street : my plan Is the same as your own, Sir; it is indeed !

I blend and arrange and compose : subdue And indicate, aye and emphasise : Till the world gets a hint of the truth : and you ?

You do just the same, and the artist's name Is for writer and painter, the highest prize.

Your colour and form, my words and style, Your wondrous brush and my busy pen, Are our medium, our tools : and all the while The question for each is what truths we teach And how we interpret the world to men.

So I do dare claim to be kin with you, And I hold you higher than if your task Were doing no more than you say you do : We shall live, if at all, we shall stand or fall, As men to whom the world doffs its mask, And who answer the questions our fellows ask. J. K. S.