Victor Rafolski On Art Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFFAGHIJKKLMN OPQRSTUVW XYPZA2B2SC2D2E2F2G2H 2H2I2J2J2O K2L2H2OJ2J2J2M2J2N2O 2P2GIQ2GR2S2 T2J2J2U2U2JV2W2U2X2U 2QU2U2Y2W2J2U2Z2G A3P2J2F2J2J2U2JJ2B3B 3G U2P2H2C3D3E3U2U2C3C3 T2XT2QGJ2J2ZU2F3JU2J 2 U2U2X2JJ2J2U2A3G3J2G FF2J2F U2U2U2J2J2U2GGJ2H3U2 FF2GI3E3U2FJ3G K3J2GGJ2U2L3J2J2HGJ2 J2GJ2J2U2Q2GU2M3U2J2 J2X2J2N3O3 J2P3P3GIFT2 FU2IJ2QY2U2U2U2U2Q2U 2U2U2N3PGU2GJ2J2Q3FF R3P3 FYou dull Goliaths clothed in coats of blue | A |
Strained and half bursted by the swell of flesh | B |
Topped by Gorilla heads You Marmoset | C |
Trained scoundrel taught to question and ensnare | D |
I hate you hate your laws and hate your courts | E |
Hands off give me a chair now let me be | F |
I'll tell you more than you can think to ask me | F |
I love this woman but what is love to you | A |
What is it to your laws or courts I love her | G |
She loves me if you'd know I entered her room | H |
She stood before me naked shrank a little | I |
Cried out a little calmed her sudden cry | J |
When she saw amiable passion in my eyes | K |
She loves me if you'd know I saw in her eyes | K |
More in those moments than whole hours of talk | L |
From witness stands exculpate could make clear | M |
My innocence | N |
- | |
But if I did a crime | O |
My excuse is hunger hunger for more life | P |
Oh what a world where beauty rapture love | Q |
Are walled in and locked up like coal or food | R |
And only may he had by purchasers | S |
From whose fat fingers slip the unheeded gold | T |
Oh what a world where beauty lies in waste | U |
While power and freedom skulk with famished lips | V |
Too tightly pressed for curses | W |
- | |
So do men | X |
Save for the thousandth man deny themselves | Y |
And live in meagreness to make sure a life | P |
Of meagreness by hearth stones long since stale | Z |
And live in ways companionships as fixed | A2 |
As the geared figures of the Strassburg clock | B2 |
You wonder at war Why war lets loose desires | S |
Emotions long repressed Would you stop war | C2 |
Then let men live The moral equivalent | D2 |
Of war is freedom Art does not suffice | E2 |
Religion is not life but life is living | F2 |
And painted cherries to the hungry thrush | G2 |
Is art to life The artist lived his work | H2 |
You cannot live his life who love his work | H2 |
You are the thrush that pecks at painted cherries | I2 |
Who hope to live through art Beer soaked Goliaths | J2 |
The story's coming of her nakedness | J2 |
Be patient for a time | O |
- | |
All this I learned | K2 |
While painting pictures no one ever bought | L2 |
Till hunger drove me to this servile work | H2 |
As butler in her father's house with time | O |
On certain days to walk the galleries | J2 |
And look at pictures marbles For I saw | J2 |
I was not living while I painted pictures | J2 |
I was not living working for a crust | M2 |
I was not living walking galleries | J2 |
All this was but vicarious life which felt | N2 |
Through gazing at the thing the artist made | O2 |
In memory of the life he lived himself | P2 |
As we preserve the fragrance of a flower | G |
By drawing off its essence in a bottle | I |
Where color fluttering leaves are thrown away | Q2 |
To get the inner passion of the flower | G |
Extracted to a bottle that a queen | R2 |
May act the flower's part | S2 |
- | |
Say what you will | T2 |
Make laws to strangle life shout from your pulpits | J2 |
Your desks of editors your woolsack benches | J2 |
Where judges sit that this dull hypocrite | U2 |
You call the State has fashioned life aright | U2 |
The secret is abroad from eye to eye | J |
The secret passes from poor eyes that wink | V2 |
In boredom in fatigue in furious strength | W2 |
Roped down or barred that what the human heart | U2 |
Dreams of and hopes for till the aspiring flame | X2 |
Flaps in the guttered candle and goes out | U2 |
Is love for body and for spirit love | Q |
To satisfy their hunger Yet what is it | U2 |
This earth this life what is it but a meadow | U2 |
Where spirits are left free a little while | Y2 |
Within a little space so long as strength | W2 |
Flesh blood increases to the day of use | J2 |
As roasts or stews wherewith this witless beast | U2 |
Society may feed himself and keep | Z2 |
His olden shape and power | G |
- | |
Fools go crop | A3 |
The herbs they turn you to and starve yourself | P2 |
For what you want and count it righteousness | J2 |
No less you covet love Poor shadows sighing | F2 |
Across the curtain racing Mangled souls | J2 |
Pecking so feebly at the painted cherries | J2 |
Inhaling from a bottle what was lived | U2 |
These summers gone You know and scarce deny | J |
That what we men desire are horses dogs | J2 |
Loves women insurrections travel change | B3 |
Thrill in the wreck and rapture for the change | B3 |
And re adjusted order | G |
- | |
As I turned | U2 |
From painting and from art yet found myself | P2 |
Full of all lusts while bound to menial work | H2 |
Where my eyes daily rested on this woman | C3 |
A thought came to me like a little spark | D3 |
One sees far down the darkness of a cave | E3 |
Which grows into a flame a blinding light | U2 |
As one approaches it so did this thought | U2 |
Both burn and blind me For I loved this woman | C3 |
I wanted her why should I lose this woman | C3 |
What was there to oppose possession Will | T2 |
Her will you say I am not sure but then | X |
Which will is better mine or hers Which will | T2 |
Deserves achievement Which has rights above | Q |
The other I desire her her desire | G |
Is not toward me which of these two desires | J2 |
Shall triumph Why not mine for me and hers | J2 |
For her at least the stronger must prevail | Z |
And wreck itself or bend all else before it | U2 |
That millionaire who wooed her tried in vain | F3 |
To overwhelm her will with gold and I | J |
With passion boldness would have overwhelmed it | U2 |
And what's the difference | J2 |
- | |
But as I said | U2 |
I walked the galleries When I stood in the yard | U2 |
Bare armed bare throated at my work she came | X2 |
And gazed upon me from her window I | J |
Could feel the exhausting influence of her eyes | J2 |
Then in a concentration which was blindness | J2 |
To all else so bewilderment of mind | U2 |
I'd go to see Watteau's Antiope | A3 |
Where he sketched Zeus in hunger drawing back | G3 |
The veil that hid her sleeping nakedness | J2 |
There was Correggio's too on whom a satyr | G |
Smiled for his amorous wonder A Semele | F |
Done by an unknown hand a thing of lightning | F2 |
Moved through by Zeus who seized her as the flames | J2 |
Consumed her ravished beauty | F |
- | |
So I looked | U2 |
And trembled then returned perhaps to find | U2 |
Her eyes upon me conscious calm elate | U2 |
And radiate with lashes of surprise | J2 |
Delight as when a star is still but shines | J2 |
And on this night somehow our natures worked | U2 |
To climaxes For first she dressed for dinner | G |
To show more back and bosom than before | G |
And as I served her her down looking eyes | J2 |
Were more than glances Then she dropped her napkin | H3 |
Before I could begin to bend she leaned | U2 |
And let me see oh yes she let me see | F |
The white foam of her little breasts caressing | F2 |
The scarlet flame of silk a swooning shore | G |
Of bright carnations It was from such foam | I3 |
That Venus rose And as I stooped and gave | E3 |
The napkin to her she pushed out a foot | U2 |
And then I coughed for breath grown short and she | F |
Concealed a smile and you you jailers laugh | J3 |
Coarse mouthed and mock my hunger | G |
- | |
I go on | K3 |
Observe how courage boldness mark my steps | J2 |
At nine o'clock she climbs to her boudoir | G |
I finding errands in the hallway hear | G |
The desultory taking up of books | J2 |
And through her open door see her at last | U2 |
Cast off her dinner gown and to the bath | L3 |
Step like a ray of moonlight Then she snaps | J2 |
The light on where the onyx tub and walls | J2 |
Dazzle the air I enter then her room | H |
And stand against the closed door do not pry | G |
Upon her in the bath Give her the chance | J2 |
To fly me fight me standing face to face | J2 |
I hear her flounder in the water hear | G |
Hands slap and slip with water breast and arms | J2 |
Hear little sighs and shudders and the roughness | J2 |
Of crash towels on her back when in a minute | U2 |
She stands with back toward me in the doorway | Q2 |
A sea shell glory pink and white to hair | G |
Sun lit a lily crowned with powdered gold | U2 |
She turned toward her dresser then and shook | M3 |
White dust of talcum on her arms and looked | U2 |
So lovingly upon her tense straight breasts | J2 |
Touching them under with soft tapering hands | J2 |
To blue eyes deepening like a brazier flame | X2 |
Turned by a sudden gust Who gives her these | J2 |
The thought ran through me for her joy alone | N3 |
And not for mine | O3 |
- | |
So I stood there like Zeus | J2 |
Coming in thunder to Semele like | P3 |
The diety of Watteau Correggio | P3 |
Had never painted me a satyr there | G |
Drinking her beauty in so worshipful | I |
My will subdued in worship of her beauty | F |
To obey her will | T2 |
- | |
And then she turned and saw me | F |
And faced me in her nakedness nor tried | U2 |
To hide it from me faced me immovable | I |
A Mona Lisa smile upon her lips | J2 |
And let me plead my cause make known my love | Q |
Speak out my torture wearing still the smile | Y2 |
Let me approach her till I almost touched | U2 |
The whiteness of her bosom Then it seemed | U2 |
That smile of hers not wilting me she clapped | U2 |
Hands over eyes and said I am afraid | U2 |
Oh no it cannot be what would they say | Q2 |
Then rushing in the bathroom quick she slammed | U2 |
The door and shrieked You scoundrel go you beast | U2 |
My dream went up like paper charred and whirled | U2 |
Above a hearth Thrilling I stood alone | N3 |
Amid her room and saw my life our life | P |
Embodied in this woman lately there | G |
Lying and cowardly And as I turned | U2 |
To leave the room her father and the gardener | G |
Pounced on me threw me down a flight of stairs | J2 |
And turned me over stunned to you the law | J2 |
Here with these others who have stolen coal | Q3 |
To keep them warm as I have stolen beauty | F |
To keep from freezing in this arid country | F |
Of winter winds on which the dust of custom | R3 |
Rides like a fog | P3 |
- | |
Now do your worst to me | F |
Edgar Lee Masters
(1)
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