We on the Canvas repeat
Things fairest, things most sweet;²
We can have anything we Love
Fair & Forever if we paint its Picture:³
Mine eye hath play’d the Painter—
And hath stell’d thy Beauty’s form.⁴
We Paint the Soul—
Never mind Legs & Arms!⁵
Taking a tube of green and spreading
It on the page does not make a Prairie, they’re
Born another way: they Surge up from the page.⁶
The pencil doing the drawing must give off
The same smell as the Flower it draws!⁷
When we paint Spring, we don’t paint
Willows, plums, peaches, or apricots—
We just paint Spring!⁸
Paintings are poems that stay Quiet,
And Poems paintings that Speak!⁹
The Martyr Painters—never spoke—
Bequeathing, rather—to their Work!¹⁰
¹ Thomas Eakins, quoted by Philip Dacey in Collage Sonnet
² Alice Cary, An Order for a Picture
³ Ashley Bryan, The Artist
⁴ William Shakespeare, Sonnet XXIV
⁵ Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi
⁶ Francis Ponge tr. Beth Archer, The Prairie
⁷ Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginning
⁸ Dogen Zenji tr. Tanahashi & Weitzman, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye
⁹ Simonides, paraphrased by Dan Beachy-Quick in Stone-Garland
¹⁰ Emily Dickinson, The Martyr Poets