The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 4., Personal Poems, An Artist of the beautiful.

Home Collections/Texts Perseus Catalog Research Grants Open Source About Help

Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:

This text is part of:

19th-Century American

View text chunked by:

chapter : section : page
chapter : page

An Artist of the beautiful.

George fuller.

haunted Of Beauty, like the marvellous youth
     Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve! How passing fair
Her shapes took color in thy homestead air!
     How on thy canvas even her dreams were truth!
Magician! who from commonest elements
     Called up divine ideals, clothed upon
By mystic lights soft blending into one
     Womanly grace and child-like innocence.
Teacher! thy lesson was not given in vain.
     Beauty is goodness; ugliness is sin;
Art's place is sacred: nothing foul therein
     May crawl or tread with bestial feet profane.
If rightly choosing is the painter's test,
     Thy choice, O master, ever was the best.

1885.

Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1888-89.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar:

The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 4.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

This text is part of:

View text chunked by:

Table of Contents:

An Artist of the beautiful.

George fuller.

The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 4. John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

This text is part of:

View text chunked by:

Table of Contents:

An Artist of the beautiful.

George fuller.

The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 4.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.