nothing to the young!

Some scratchy strokes--abrupt and few,
So easily and swift I drew,
Sufficed for my design;
My sketchy, superficial hand
Drew solids at a dash--and spanned
A surface with a line.

Not long my eye was thus content,
But grew more critical--my bent
Essayed a higher walk;
I copied leaden eyes in lead--
Rheumatic hands in white and red,
And gouty feet--in chalk.

Anon my studious art for days
Kept making faces--happy phrase,
For faces such as mine!
Accomplished in the details then,
I left the minor parts of men,
And drew the form divine.

Old Gods and Heroes--Trojan--Greek,
Figures--long after the antique,
Great Ajax justly feared;
Hectors, of whom at night I dreamt,
And Nestor, fringed enough to tempt
Bird-nesters to his beard.

A Bacchus, leering on a bowl,
A Pallas that out-stared her owl,
A Vulcan--very lame;
A Dian stuck about with stars,
With my right hand I murdered Mars--
(One Williams did the same).

But tired of this dry work at last,
Crayon and chalk aside I cast,
And gave my brush a drink!
Dipping--"as when a painter dips
In gloom of earthquake and eclipse,"--
That is--in Indian ink.

Oh then, what black Mont Blancs arose,
Crested with soot, and not with snows:
What clouds of dingy hue!
In spite of what the bard has penned,
I fear the distance did not "lend
Enchantment to the view."

Not Radcliffe's brush did e'er design
Black Forests half so black as mine,
Or lakes so like a pall;
The Chinese cake dispersed a ray
Of darkness, like the light of Day
And Martin over all.

Yet urchin pride sustained me still,
I gazed on all with right good will,
And spread the dingy tint;
"No holy Luke helped me to paint,
The devil surely, not a Saint,
Had any finger in't!"

But colors came!--like morning light,
With gorgeous hues, displacing night,
Or Spring's enlivened scene:
At once the sable shades withdrew;
My skies got very, very blue;
My trees extremely green.

And washed by my cosmetic brush,
How Beauty's cheek began to blush;
With lock of auburn stain--
(Not Goldsmith's Auburn)--nut-brown hair,
That made her loveliest of the fair;
Not "loveliest of the plain!"

Her lips were of vermilion hue:
Love in her eyes, and Prussian blue,
Set all my heart in flame!
A young Pygmalion, I adored
The maids I made--but time was stored
With evil--and it came!

Perspective daw