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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116212" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Pictor Ignotus</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Florence, 15—</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I could have painted pictures like that youth's<br> Ye praise so. How my soul springs up! No bar<br>Stayed me—ah, thought which saddens while it soothes!<br> —Never did fate forbid me, star by star,<br>To outburst on your night with all my gift<br> Of fires from God: nor would my flesh have shrunk<br>From seconding my soul, with eyes uplift<br> And wide to heaven, or, straight like thunder, sunk<br>To the centre, of an instant; or around<br> Turned calmly and inquisitive, to scan <br>The license and the limit, space and bound,<br> Allowed to truth made visible in man.<br>And like that youth ye praise so, all I saw,<br> Over the canvas could my hand have flung,<br>Each face obedient to its passion's law,<br> Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue;<br>Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood,<br> A-tiptoe for the blessing of embrace,<br>Or Rapture drooped the eyes, as when her brood<br> Pull down the nesting dove's heart to its place; <br>Or Confidence lit swift the forehead up,<br> And locked the mouth fast, like a castle braved,—<br>O human faces, hath it spilt, my cup?<br> What did ye give me that I have not saved?<br>Nor will I say I have not dreamed (how well!)<br> Of going—I, in each new picture,—forth,<br>As, making new hearts beat and bosoms swell,<br> To Pope or Kaiser, East, West, South, or North,<br>Bound for the calmly-satisfied great State,<br> Or glad aspiring little burgh, it went, <br>Flowers cast upon the car which bore the freight,<br> Through old streets named afresh from the event,<br>Till it reached home, where learned age should greet<br> My face, and youth, the star not yet distinct<br>Above his hair, lie learning at my feet!—<br> Oh, thus to live, I and my picture, linked<br>With love about, and praise, till life should end,<br> And then not go to heaven, but linger here,<br>Here on my earth, earth's every man my friend,—<br> The thought grew frightful, 'twas so wildly dear! <br>But a voice changed it. Glimpses of such sights<br> Have scared me, like the revels through a door<br>Of some strange house of idols at its rites!<br> This world seemed not the world it was before:<br>Mixed with my loving trusting ones, there trooped<br> ...Who summoned those cold faces that begun<br>To press on me and judge me? Though I stooped<br> Shrinking, as from the soldiery a nun,<br>They drew me forth, and spite of me...enough!<br> These buy and sell our pictures, take and give, <br>Count them for garniture and household-stuff,<br> And where they live needs must our pictures live<br>And see their faces, listen to their prate,<br> Partakers of their daily pettiness,<br>Discussed of,—"This I love, or this I hate,<br> This likes me more, and this affects me less!"<br>Wherefore I choose my portion. If at whiles<br> My heart sinks, as monotonous I paint<br>These endless cloisters and eternal aisles<br> With the same series, Virgin, Babe and Saint, <br>With the same cold calm beautiful regard,—<br> At least no merchant traffics in my heart;<br>The sanctuary's gloom at least shall ward<br> Vain tongues from where my pictures stand apart:<br>Only prayer breaks the silence of the shrine<br> While, blackening in the daily candle-smoke,<br>They moulder on the damp wall's travertine,<br> 'Mid echoes the light footstep never woke.<br>So, die my pictures! surely, gently die!<br> O youth, men praise so—holds their praise its worth? <br>Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry?<br> Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Robert+Browning">Robert Browning</a> from <i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116212" data-title="Pictor Ignotus de Robert Browning" data-description="Florence, 15—//I could have painted pictures like that youth's/ Ye praise so. How my soul springs up! No bar/Stayed me—ah, thought which saddens while it soothes!/ —Never did fate forbid me, star by star,/To outburst on your night with all m..."></div>
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