The Collector Cleans His Picture Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BBCDEFGFG BGHBIBBIJBK IIILBBJFJIEJ GBMNBNFGE| Fili hominis ecce ego tollo a te desiderabile oculorum tuorom in plaga EZECH xxiv | A |
| - | |
| How I remember cleaning that strange picture | B |
| I had been deep in duty for my sick neighbour | B |
| His besides my own over several Sundays | C |
| Often too in the week so with parish pressures | D |
| Baptisms burials doctorings conjugal counsel | E |
| All the whatnots asked of a rural parson | F |
| Faith I was well nigh broken should have been fully | G |
| Saving for one small secret relaxation | F |
| One that in mounting manhood had grown my hobby | G |
| - | |
| This was to delve at whiles for easel lumber | B |
| Stowed in the backmost slums of a soon reached city | G |
| Merely on chance to uncloak some worthy canvas | H |
| Panel or plaque blacked blind by uncouth adventure | B |
| Yet under all concealing a precious art feat | I |
| Such I had found not yet My latest capture | B |
| Came from the rooms of a trader in ancient house gear | B |
| Who had no scent of beauty or soul for brushcraft | I |
| Only a tittle cost it murked with grime films | J |
| Gatherings of slow years thick varnished over | B |
| Never a feature manifest of man's painting | K |
| - | |
| So one Saturday time ticking hard on midnight | I |
| Ere an hour subserved I set me upon it | I |
| Long with coiled up sleeves I cleaned and yet cleaned | I |
| Till a first fresh spot a high light looked forth | L |
| Then another like fair flesh and another | B |
| Then a curve a nostril and next a finger | B |
| Tapering shapely significantly pointing slantwise | J |
| Flemish I said Nay Spanish But nay Italian | F |
| Then meseemed it the guise of the ranker Venus | J |
| Named of some Astarte of some Cotytto | I |
| Down I knelt before it and kissed the panel | E |
| Drunk with the lure of love's inhibited dreamings | J |
| - | |
| Till the dawn I rubbed when there gazed up at me | G |
| A hag that had slowly emerged from under my hands there | B |
| Pointing the slanted finger towards a bosom | M |
| Eaten away of a rot from the lusts of a lifetime | N |
| I could have ended myself in heart shook horror | B |
| Stunned I sat till roused by a clear voiced bell chime | N |
| Fresh and sweet as the dew fleece under my luthern | F |
| It was the matin service calling to me | G |
| From the adjacent steeple | E |
Thomas Hardy
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about The Collector Cleans His Picture poem by Thomas Hardy
Best Poems of Thomas Hardy