Quo Musa Tendis? :: :: University of Virginia Library

You take a brush, and I take a pen:
You mix bright colours, I use black ink:
You cover a canvas, you first of men,
I write on a sheet for a scribbler meet:
Well, a contrast's a contrast: I will not shrink.

First you compose: a line's grand sweep,
A break, a blend, a guide for our eyes:
You've a tone to settle, a curve to keep,
An impression to catch, new tints to match;
And a lesson behind it surely lies.

And every touch of your busy brush,
And every scrape of your palette-knife,
Each squeeze of the tube whence the pigments gush,
Each rub of your thumb, helps the whole become
A living page from the scroll of life.

There's a landscape, a face, which displays—you know it—
A fact, a fancy, a thought, a dream,
Which the many miss; so, my picture-poet,
You catch a part not the whole,—that's art,—
And fix it for ever: a simpler theme

For a man to grasp at, conceive, remember,
Than that which you saw and which we see not:
There's your Bathing Girl and your Bleak December,
Which you paint and exhibit for fools to gibbet:
You wrote the play, but God gave the plot.

And we in the pit have caught the meaning
You caught, or so much as you saved for us;
But here I perceive you intervening,
I hear your stricture: “A picture's a picture:
Colour and form:” well! come, discuss.

Is there nothing but colour and form? no soul?
A judicious blend, an arrangement clever:
Reds and blues: lines curves: and is that the whole?
No hint designed of the truth behind:
Just a thing of beauty, a joy for ever!

I think you are wronging yourself my friend,
And the noble craft that you ply so well:
For colour and form have a certain end,
And composition, or else ambition
Were better bestowed than on paint: you tell

New truths to us; draw for us morals old
From what seemed to have no moral at all:
And all's not done when your picture's sold,
Nor when you're R.A., at a future day,
And your picture glows on a palace wall.

To see, and to paint, and to know at sight
How much wants painting, how much neglect,
Is a noble function, I know: you're right:
But by nature's laws there is never a cause
That cannot or does not produce effect.

And, to point the contrast, and draw the moral,
I too, with my humbler art, aspire
To a name which I hope you will not quarrel
To see me claim: to the noble name
Of an artist: in truth I know no higher.

But the metres I choose, and the rules I keep,
And the lilt of the verses I write for sport,
And the rhythm of lines that have made you sleep,
And the style of my prose, which, goodness knows,
Might grow far better and still fall short;

All these, were they better, or even free
From faults, would never enable you
In the scribbler a brother in arms to see
In the noble fray which you fight to day
For the good, the beautiful and the true.

I've thoughts to interpret and truths to teach,
I've an unread lesson at first to read,
Then to state so much of as e'er can reach
The brain of the man in the street: my plan
Is the same as your own, Sir, it is indeed!

I blend and arrange and compose: subdue
And indicate, aye and emphasize:
Till the world gets a hint of the truth: and you?
You do just the same, and the artist's name
Is for writer and painter the highest prize.

Your colour and form, my words and style,
Your wondrous brush and my busy pen,
Are our medium, our tools: and all the while
The question for each is what truths we teach
And how we interpret the world to men.

So I do dare claim to be kin with you,
And I hold you higher than if your task
Were doing no more than you say you do:
We shall live, if at all, we shall stand or fall,
As men before whom the world doffs its mask
And who answer the questions our fellows ask.