In a glade of an elfin forest <br />When Sussex was Eden-new, <br />I came on an elvish painter <br />And watched as his picture grew, <br />A harebell nodded beside him. <br />He dipt his brush in the dew. <br /> <br />And it might be the wild thyme round him <br />That shone in the dark strange ring; <br />But his brushes were bees' antennae, <br />His knife was a wasp's blue sting; <br />And his gorgeous exquisite palette <br />Was a butterfly's fan-shaped wing. <br /> <br />And he mingled its powdery colours, <br />And painted the lights that pass, <br />On a delicate cobweb canvas <br />That gleamed like a magic glass, <br />And bloomed like a banner of elf-land, <br />Between two stalks of grass; <br /> <br />Till it shone like an angel's feather <br />With sky-born opal and rose, <br />And gold from the foot of the rainbow, <br />And colours that no man knows; <br />And I laughed in the sweet May weather, <br />Because of the themes he chose. <br /> <br />For he painted the things that matter, <br />The tints that we all pass by, <br />Like the little blue wreaths of incense <br />That the wild thyme breathes to the sky; <br />Or the first white bud of the hawthorn, <br />And the light in a blackbird's eye; <br /> <br />And the shadows on soft white cloud-peaks <br />That carolling skylarks throw,-- <br />Dark dots on the slumbering splendours <br />That under the wild wings flow, <br />Wee shadows like violets trembling <br />On the unseen breasts of snow; <br /> <br />With petals too lovely for colour <br />That shake to the rapturous wings, <br />And grow as the bird draws near them, <br />And die as he mounts and sings,-- <br />Ah, only those exquisite brushes <br />Could paint these marvellous things.<br /><br />Alfred Noyes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-elfin-artist/
