Читать книгу A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools - National Gallery (Great Britain) - Страница 1
ОглавлениеA picture which is worth buying is also worth seeing. Every noble picture is a manuscript book, of which only one copy exists, or ever can exist. A National Gallery is a great library, of which the books must be read upon their shelves (Ruskin: Arrows of the Chace, i. 71).
There, the long dim galleries threading,
May the artist's eye behold
Breathing from the "deathless canvass"
Records of the years of old:
Pallas there, and Jove, and Juno,
"Take" once more their "walks abroad,"
Under Titian's fiery woodlands
And the saffron skies of Claude:
There the Amazons of Rubens
Lift the failing arm to strike,
And the pale light falls in masses
On the horsemen of Vandyke;
And in Berghem's pools reflected
Hang the cattle's graceful shapes,
And Murillo's soft boy-faces
Laugh amid the Seville grapes;
And all purest, loveliest fancies
That in poet's soul may dwell,
Started into shape and substance
At the touch of Raphael.
Lo! her wan arms folded meekly,
And the glory of her hair,
Falling as a robe around her,
Kneels the Magdalen in prayer;
And the white-robed Virgin-mother
Smiles, as centuries back she smiled,
Half in gladness, half in wonder,
On the calm face of her Child: —
And that mighty Judgment-vision
Tells how men essayed to climb
Up the ladder of the ages,
Past the frontier-walls of Time;
Heard the trumpet-echoes rolling
Thro' the phantom-peopled sky,
And the still Voice bid this mortal
Put on immortality.
Calverley.
