From: The Dial, Vol. I, No. IV (April 1841).
Author:
Published: Weeks Jordan and Company 1841 Boston
“And really it is not more flattered than art ought to flatter. Art should paint the picture as inventive nature (granting there is such a thing) designed it, repairing the imperfections which necessarily result from the resistance of the material worked in, repairing also the injury done it by conquering time.”—Translated from the German of LESSING.
The romance of those lips or lashes?
Why that bosom’s blush it shares not?
Mirrors not her eye’s quick flashes?
Is it false in not revealing
Her secret consciousness of beauty—
The graceful, half-developed feeling—
Desire opposing fancied duty?
For, on the canvass, shadowy hair
Streams backward from an earnest face;
The features one expression bear,
The various lines one story trace.
And what is that expression?—Love!
Not wild-fire passion, bright but damp.
A purer flame, which points above—
Though kindled at an earthly lamp.
Call it Devotion—Call it Joy—
‘Tis the true love of woman’s heart—
Emotion pure from all alloy—
Action complete in every part.
Blame not the Artist, then, who leaves
The circumstances of the hour,
Within the husk the fruit perceives,
Within the bud, the future flower.
He took the one pervading grace,
Which charms in all and placed it here,
The inmost secret of her face
The key to her locked character.
The spirit of her life, which beats—
In every pulse of thought and feeling,
The central fire which lights and beats
Explaining Earth, and Heaven revealing.
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