Читать книгу Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 - Various - Страница 3

Once I sate upon a mountain,

Gazing on the mist before me;

Like a great grey sheet of canvass,

Shrouding all things in its cover,

Did it float ’twixt earth and heaven.

Then a child appear’d beside me;

Saying, “Friend, it is not seemly,

Thus to gaze in idle wonder,

With that noble breadth before thee.

Hast thou lost thine inspiration?

Hath the spirit of the painter

Died within thee utterly?”

But I turn’d and look’d upon him,

Speaking not, but thinking inly,

“Will he read a lesson now!”

“Folded hands,” pursued the infant,

“Never yet have won a triumph.

Look! I’ll paint for thee a picture

Such as none have seen before.”

And he pointed with his finger,

Which like any rose was ruddy,

And upon the breadth of vapour

With that finger ’gan to draw.

First a glorious sun he painted,

Dazzling when I look’d upon it;

And he made the inner border

Of the clouds around it golden,

With the light rays through the masses

Pouring down in streams of splendour.

Then the tender taper summits

Of the trees, all leaf and glitter,

Started from the sullen void;

And the slopes behind them rising,

Graceful-lined in undulation,

Glided backwards one by one.

Underneath, be sure, was water;

And the stream was drawn so truly

That it seem’d to break and shimmer,

That it seem’d as if cascading

From the lofty rolling wheel.

There were flowers beside the brooklet;

There were colours on the meadow—

Gold and azure, green and purple,

Emerald and bright carbuncle.

Clear and pure he work’d the ether

As with lapis-lazuli,

And the mountains in the distance

Stretching blue and far away—

All so well, that I, in rapture

At this second revelation,

Turn’d to gaze upon the painter

From the picture which he drew.

“Have I not,” he said, “convinced thee

That I know the painter’s secret?

Yet the greatest is to come.”

Then he drew with gentle finger,

Still more delicately pointed,

In the wood, about its margin,

Where the sun within the water

Glanced as from the clearest mirror,

Such a maiden’s form!

Perfect shape in perfect raiment,

Fair young cheeks ’neath glossy ringlets,

And the cheeks were of the colour

Of the finger whence they came.

“Child,” I cried, “what wond’rous master

In his school of art hath form’d thee,

That so deftly and so truly,

From the sketch unto the burnish,

Thou hast finish’d such a gem?”

As I spoke, a breeze arising

Stirr’d the tree-tops in the picture,

Ruffled every pool of water,

Waved the garments of the maiden;

And, what more than all amazed me,

Her small feet took motion also,

And she came towards the station

Where I sat beside the boy.

So, when every thing was moving,

Leaves and water, flowers and raiment,

And the footsteps of the darling—

Think you I remain’d as lifeless

As the rock on which I rested?

No, I trow—not I!