"bestir" poems - Hello Poetry

I. St. Luke The Painter Give honour unto Luke Evangelist; For he it was (the aged legends say) Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray. Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist Of devious symbols: but soon having wist How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day Are symbols also in some deeper way, She looked through these to God and was God’s priest. And if, past noon, her toil began to irk, And she sought talismans, and turned in vain To soulless self-reflections of man’s skill, Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still Kneel in the latter grass to pray again, Ere the night cometh and she may not work. II. Not As These ‘I am not as these are,’ the poet saith In youth’s pride, and the painter, among men At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen, And shut about with his own frozen breath. To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith As poets,—only paint as painters,—then He turns in the cold silence; and again Shrinking, ‘I am not as these are,’ he saith. And say that this is so, what follows it? For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head, Such words were well; but they see on, and far. Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit Fair for the Future’s track, look thou instead,— Say thou instead ‘I am not as these are.’ III. The Husbandmen Though God, as one that is an householder, Called these to labour in his vine-yard first, Before the husk of darkness was well burst Bidding them ***** their way out and bestir, (Who, questioned of their wages, answered, ‘Sir, Unto each man a penny:’) though the worst Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst: Though God hath since found none such as these were To do their work like them:—Because of this Stand not ye idle in the market-place. Which of ye knoweth he is not that last Who may be first by faith and will?—yea, his The hand which after the appointed days And hours shall give a Future to their Past?

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Old And New Art

I. St. Luke The Painter Give honour unto Luke Evangelist; For he it was (the aged legends say) Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray. Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist Of devious symbols: but soon having wist How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day Are symbols also in some deeper way, She looked through these to God and was God’s priest. And if, past noon, her toil began to irk, And she sought talismans, and turned in vain To soulless self-reflections of man’s skill, Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still Kneel in the latter grass to pray again, Ere the night cometh and she may not work. II. Not As These ‘I am not as these are,’ the poet saith In youth’s pride, and the painter, among men At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen, And shut about with his own frozen breath. To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith As poets,—only paint as painters,—then He turns in the cold silence; and again Shrinking, ‘I am not as these are,’ he saith. And say that this is so, what follows it? For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head, Such words were well; but they see on, and far. Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit Fair for the Future’s track, look thou instead,— Say thou instead ‘I am not as these are.’ III. The Husbandmen Though God, as one that is an householder, Called these to labour in his vine-yard first, Before the husk of darkness was well burst Bidding them ***** their way out and bestir, (Who, questioned of their wages, answered, ‘Sir, Unto each man a penny:’) though the worst Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst: Though God hath since found none such as these were To do their work like them:—Because of this Stand not ye idle in the market-place. Which of ye knoweth he is not that last Who may be first by faith and will?—yea, his The hand which after the appointed days And hours shall give a Future to their Past?