The Painter Dreaming In The Scholar-s House Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

Rhyme Scheme: AB BCC DEFGBHIJBKALMNBOBPQR S TUBBUUCBUU VUBABUU BWSBX UBBUB BBBUB B BYB BUUBB ZRBUU A2AB2AUC2AUBA2 BUBRZUUUUBBBUD2A T AUE2BUU BF2G2UUA UH2I2J2UBUBU

lt i gt in memory of the painters Paul KleeA
and Paul Terence Feeley lt i gtB
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I-
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The painter s eye follows relation outB
His work is not to paint the visibleC
He says it is to render visibleC
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Being a man and not a god he standsD
Already in a world of sense from whichE
He borrows to begin with mental thingsF
Chiefly the abstract elements of languageG
The point the line the plane the colors andB
The geometric shapes Of these he spinsH
Relation out he weaves its fabric upI
So that it speaks darkly as music doesJ
Singing the secret history of the mindB
And when in this the visible world appearsK
As it does do mountain flower cloud and treeA
All haunted here and there with the human faceL
It happens as by accident althoughM
The accident is of design It is becauseN
Language first rises from the speechless worldB
That the painterly intelligenceO
Can say correctly that he makes his worldB
Not imitates the one before his eyesP
Hence the delightsome gardens the dark shoresQ
The terrifying forests where nightfallR
Enfolds a lost and tired travelerS
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And hence the careless crowd deludes itselfT
By likening his hieroglyphic signsU
And secret alphabets to the drawing of a childB
That likeness is significant the other sideB
Of what they see for his simplicitiesU
Are not the first ones but the furthest onesU
Final refinements of his thought made visibleC
He is the painter of the human mindB
Finding and faithfully reflecting the mindfulnessU
That is in things and not the things themselvesU
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For such a man art is an act of faithV
Prayer the study of it as Blake saysU
And praise the practice nor does he divideB
Making from teaching or from theoryA
The three are one and in his hours of artB
There shines a happiness through darkest themesU
As though spirit and sense were not at oddsU
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II-
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The painter as an allegory of the mindB
At genesis He takes a burlap bagW
Tears it open and tacks it on a stretcherS
He paints it black because as he has saidB
Everything looks different on blackX
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Suppose the burlap bag to be the universeU
And black because its volume is the voidB
Before the stars were At the painter s handB
Volume becomes one sidedly a surfaceU
And all his depths are on the face of itB
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Against this flat abyss this groundless groundB
Of zero thickness stretched against the coldB
Dark silence of the Absolutely NotB
Material worlds arise the colored earthsU
And oil of plants that imitate the lightB
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They imitate the light that is in thoughtB
For the mind relates to thinking as the eye-
Relates to light Only because the worldB
Already is a language can the painter speakY
According to his grammar of the groundB
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It is archaic speech that has not yetB
Divided out its cadences in wordsU
It is a language for the oldest spellsU
About how some thoughts rose into the mindB
While others stranger still sleep in the worldB
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So grows the garden green the sun vermilionZ
He sees the rose flame up and fade and fallR
And be the same rose still the radiant in redB
He paints his language and his language isU
The theory of what the painter thinksU
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III-
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The painter s eye attends to death and birthA2
Together seeing a single energyA
Momently manifest in every formB2
As in the tree the growing of the treeA
Exploding from the seed not more nor lessU
Than from the void condensing down and inC2
Summoning sun and rain He views the treeA
The great tree standing in the garden sayU
As thrusting downward its vast spread and weightB
Growing its green height from the dark watered earthA2
And as suspended weightless in the sky-
Haled forth and held up by the hair of its headB
He follows through the flowing of the formsU
From the divisions of the trunk out toB
The veinings of the leaf and the leaf s fallR
His pencil meditates the many in the oneZ
After the method in the confluence of riversU
The running of ravines on mountainsidesU
And in the deltas of the nerves he seesU
How things must be continuous with themselvesU
As with whole worlds that they themselves are notB
In order that they may be so transformedB
He stands where the eternity of thoughtB
Opens upon perspective time and spaceU
He watches mind become incarnate thenD2
He paints the treeA
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IVT
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These thoughts have chiefly been about the painter KleeA
About how he in our hard time might stand to usU
Especially whose lives concern themselves with learningE2
As patron of the practical intelligence of artB
And thence as model modest and humorous in sufferingsU
For all research that follows spirit where it goesU
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That there should be much goodness in the worldB
Much kindness and intelligence candor and charmF2
And that it all goes down in the dust after a whileG2
This is a subject for the steadiest meditationsU
Of the heart and mind as for the tearsU
That clarify the eye toward charityA
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So may it be to all of us that at some timesU
In this bad time when faith in study seems to failH2
And when impatience in the street and still despair at homeI2
Divide the mind to rule it there shall be some comfort comeJ2
From the remembrance of so deep and clear a life as hisU
Whom I have thought of for the wholeness of his mindB
As the painter dreaming in the scholar s houseU
His dream an emblem to us of the life of thoughtB
The same dream that then flared before intelligenceU
When light first went forth looking for the eye-

Howard Nemerov



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