You on the Canvas Repeat
Things Fairest, things most Sweet²
Mine Eye hath play’d the Painter –
And hath Stell’d thy Beauty’s Form³
We can have anything we Love Fair
And Forever if we paint a Picture of it⁴
When you Paint Spring, do not paint Willows,
Plums, Peaches, or Apricots – just paint Spring⁵
Paint the Soul – never mind the Legs and Arms!⁶
Taking a Tube of Green and spreading it on the
Page does not make a Prairie, they’re Born in
Another way – they Surge up from the Page⁷
The Pencil doing the Drawing should give
Off the same Smell as the Flower it draws⁸
The Martyr Painters – Never Spoke –
Bequeathing, Rather – to their Work⁹
Paintings are Poems that stay Quiet,
And Poems Paintings that Speak¹⁰
¹ Thomas Eakins, quoted by Philip Dacey in Collage Sonnet
² Alice Cary, An Order for a Picture
³ William Shakespeare, Sonnet XXIV
⁴ Ashley Bryan, The Artist
⁵ Dogen Zenji tr. Tanahashi & Weitzman, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye
⁶ Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi
⁷ Francis Ponge tr. Beth Archer, The Prairie
⁸ Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginning
⁹ Emily Dickinson, The Martyr Poets – Did Not Tell
¹⁰ Simonides, paraphrased by Dan Beachy-Quick in Stone-Garland