So he took her as anointed <br />In the part he had appointed, <br />She was lips for smiling faintly, <br />Eyes to look and level quaintly, <br />Length of limb and splendors of the bust <br />Which he honored as he must. <br /> <br /> <br />Queen of women playing model, <br />Pure of brow but brain not idle, <br />Sitting in her silence meetly, <br />Let her adjective be stately; <br />So he thought his art would manage right <br />In the honest Northern light. <br /> <br /> <br />But he fashioned it too coldly, <br />April broke-and-entered boldly, <br />Thinking how to suit the season’s <br />Odor, savor, heats and treasons: <br />Painter! do not stoop and play the host <br />Lest the man come uppermost. <br /> <br /> <br />Yet he knew that he was altered <br />When the perfect woman faltered, <br />Languish in her softly speaking, <br />Anguish, even, in her looking: <br />All the art had fled his fingertips <br />So he bent and kissed her lips. <br /> <br /> <br />He and Venus took their pleasure, <br />Then he turned upon his treasure, <br />Took and trampled it with loathing, <br />Flung it over cliffs to nothing; <br />Glittering in the sunlight while it fell <br />Like a lovely shattered shell. <br /> <br /> <br />Strict the silence that came onward <br />As they trod the foothill downward, <br />One more mocking noon of April, <br />Mischief always is in April; <br />Still she touched his fingers cold as ice <br />And recited, “It was nice.”<br /><br />John Crowe Ransom<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/april-treason/
