YOU tell me these great lords have raised up Art? <br />I say they have degraded it. Look you, <br />When ever did they let the Poet sing, <br />The Painter paint, the Sculptor hew and cast, <br />The Music raise her heavenly voice, except <br />To praise them and their wretched rule o'er men? <br />Behold our English poets that were poor <br />Since these great lords were rich and held the state: <br />Behold the glories of the German land, <br />Poets, Musicians, driven, like them, to death <br />Unless they'd tune their spirits' harps to play <br />Drawing-room pieces for the chattering fools <br />Who aped the taste for Art or for a leer. <br />I say, no Art was ever noble yet, <br />Noble and high, the speech of godlike men, <br />When fetters bound it, be they gold or flowers. <br />All that is noblest, highest, greatest, best, <br />Comes from the Galilean peasant's hut, comes from <br />The Stratford village, the Ayrshire plough, the shop <br />That gave us Chaucer, the humble Milton's trade — <br />Bach's, Mozart's, great Beethoven's — and these are they <br />Who knew the People, being what they knew! <br />Wherefore, if in the future years no strain, <br />No picture of earth's glory like to what <br />Your Artists raised for that small clique or this <br />Of supercilious imbecilities — <br />O if no better demi-gods of Art <br />Can rise save those whose barbarous tinsel yet <br />Makes hideous all the beauty of old homes — <br />Then let us seek the comforts of despair <br />In democratic efforts dead and gone; <br />Weep with Pheideian Athens, sigh an hour <br />With Raffaelle's Florence, beat the head and breast <br />O'er Shakspere's England that from Milton's took <br />In lips the name that leaped from lead and flame <br />From out her heart against the Spanish guns!<br /><br />Francis William Lauderdale Adams<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-an-artist/
