are and pain
From your imaginative brain?
Put Artifice upon the shelf,--
Take pen and ink, and draw--Yourself!"
The author heard: he took the hint:
He photographed himself in print.
His very inmost self he drew. . . .
The critics said, "_This_ Will Not Do.
No more we recognize the art
Which used to plumb the human heart,--
This suffers from the patent vice
Of being not Art but Artifice.
'Tis deeply with the fault imbued
Of Inverisimilitude:
He's written out; his skill's forgot:
He only writes to Boil the Pot!
It is not true; it will not wash;
'Tis mere imaginative Bosh;
And if he can't" (they told him flat)
"Get nearer to the Life than that,
He will not earn the Public's pelf!"

This happens when you draw Yourself.
Or--I should say--it happens when
Such portraits are essayed by Men:
For presently a Lady came
And did substantially the same.
(Let everyone peruse this sequel
Who dreams that Man is Woman's equal),--
She with a hand divinely free
Drew what she thought herself to be:
It did not much resemble Her
In moral strength or mental stature--
Yet did the critics all aver
It simply teemed with Human Nature!

ART AND LETTERS

In that dim and distant aeon
Known as Ante-Mycenaean,
When the proud Pelasgian still
Bounded on his native hill,
And the shy Iberian dwelt
Undisturbed by conquering Celt,
Ere from out their Aryan home
Came the Lords of Greece and Rome,
Somewhere in those ancient spots
Lived a man who painted Pots--
Painted with an art defective,
Quite devoid of all perspective,
Very crude, and causing doubt
When you tried to make them out,
Men (at least they looked like that),
Beasts that might be dog or cat,
Pictures blue and pictures red,
All that came into his head:
Not that any tale he meant
On the Pots to represent:
Simply 'twas to make them smart,
Simply Decorative Art.
So the seasons onward hied,
And the Painter-person died--
But the Pot whereon he drew
Still survived as good as new:
Painters come and painters go,
Art remains _in statu quo_.

When a thousand years (perhaps)
Had proceeded to elapse,
Out of Time's primeval mist
Came an AEtiologist;
He by shrewd and subtle guess
Wrote Descriptive Letterpress,
Setting forth the various causes
For the drawings on the