Dance Figure

Robert Henri
Julianita

Robert Henri

Julianita Ready for the Dance

Dance Figure
For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee

Dark eyed,

O woman of my dreams,

Ivory sandalled,

There is none like thee among the dancers,

None with swift feet.

I have not found thee in the tents,

In the broken darkness.

I have not found thee at the well-head

Among the women with pitchers.
Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark

Thy face as a river with lights.
White as an almond are thy shoulders;

As new almonds stripped from the husk.

They guard thee not with eunuchs;

Not with bars of copper.
Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy rest.

A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in

patterns, hast thou gathered about thee,

O Nathat-Ikanaie, 'Tree-at-the-river'.
As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me;

Thy fingers a frosted stream.
Thy maidens are white like pebbles;

Their music about thee!
There is none like thee among the dancers;

None with swift feet.

~ Ezra Pound ~

Delight in Disorder

Eugene Delacroix

Girl Seated in a Cemetery

Delight in Disorder

A sweet disorder in the dress

Kindles in clothes a wantonness.

A lawn about the shoulders thrown

Into a fair distraction;

An erring lace which here and there

Enthralls the crimson stomacher;

A cuff neglectful, and thereby

Ribbons to flow confusedly;

A winning wave, deserving note,

In the tempestuous petticoat;

A careless shoestring, in whose tie

I see a wild civility;

Do more bewitch me than when art

Is too precise in every part.

~ Robert Herrick ~

A Blessing

Franz Marc

Little Blue Horses

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

And nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

~ James Wright ~

The face that launch'd a thousand ships

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Helen of Troy

The face that launch'd a thousand ships

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!

Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.

Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,

And all is dross that is not Helena.

I will be Paris, and for love of thee,

Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack'd;

And I will combat with weak Menelaus,

And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;

Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,

And then return to Helen for a kiss.

O, thou art fairer than the evening air

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;

Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter

When he appear'd to hapless Semele;

More lovely than the monarch of the sky

In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;

And none but thou shalt be my paramour!

~ Christopher Marlowe ~

To Helen

Franz von Stuck
Helen

To Helen

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicean barks of yore

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,

The weary way-worn wanderer bore

To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

To the glory that was Greece,

And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche

How statue-like I see thee stand,

The agate lamp within my hand,

Ah! Psyche, from the regions which

Are holy land!

~ Edgar Allen Poe ~

The Eyes of Beauty

John White Alexander

A Ray of Sunlight

The Eyes of Beauty

You are a sky of autumn, pale and rose;

But all the sea of sadness in my blood

Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose,

Salt with the memory of the bitter flood.

In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er,

That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate

By woman's tooth and talon; ah, no more

Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate.

It is a ruin where the jackals rest,

And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay--

A perfume swims about your naked breast!

Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way!

With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared

Burn up these tatters that the beasts have spared!

~ Charles Baudelaire ~

Carmel Point

Elisha Kent Kane Wetherill

Sag Harbor

Carmel Point

The extraordinary patience of things!

This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses-

How beautiful when we first beheld it,

Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;

No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,

Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rock-heads-

Now the spoiler has come: does it care?

Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide

That swells and in time will ebb, and all

Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty

Lives in the very grain of the granite,

Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:

We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;

We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident

As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

~ Robinson Jeffers ~

Opus 6

Kees Van Dongen

The Corn Poppy

Opus 6

If I were only dafter
I might be making hymns
To the liquor of your laughter
And the lacquer of your limbs.
But you turn across the table
A telescope of eyes,
And it lights a Russian sable
Running circles in the skies. . .
Till I go running after,
Obeying all your whims --
For the liquor of your laughter
And the lacquer of your limbs.

~ Witter Bynner ~

writing as Emanuel Morgan

Her Eyes

John William Waterhouse

Destiny

Her Eyes

That they are brown, no man will dare to say
He knows. And yet I think that no man's look
Ever those depths of light and shade forsook,
Until their gentle pain warned him away.
Of all sweet things I know but one which may
Be likened to her eyes.
When, in deep nook
Of some green field, the water of a brook
Makes lingering, whirling eddy in its way,
Round soft drowned leaves; and in a flash of sun
They turn to gold, until the ripples run
Now brown, now yellow, changing as by some
Swift spell.
I know not with what body come
The saints. But this I know, my Paradise
Will mean the resurrection of her eyes.

~ Helen Hunt Jackson ~