THE COLLECTOR CLEANS HIS PICTURE

How I remember cleaning that strange picture!

I had been deep in duty for my sick neighbour -

His besides my own — over several Sundays,

Often, too, in the week; so with parish pressures,

Baptisms, burials, doctorings, conjugal counsel -

All the whatnots asked of a rural parson -

Faith, I was well-nigh broken, should have been fully

Saving for one small secret relaxation,

One that in mounting manhood had grown my hobby.

This was to delve at whiles for easel-lumber,

Stowed in the backmost slums of a soon-reached city,

Merely on chance to uncloak some worthy canvas,

Panel, or plaque, blacked blind by uncouth adventure,

Yet under all concealing a precious art-feat.

Such I had found not yet. My latest capture

Came from the rooms of a trader in ancient house-gear

Who had no scent of beauty or soul for brushcraft.

Only a tittle cost it — murked with grime-films,

Gatherings of slow years, thick-varnished over,

Never a feature manifest of man's painting.

So, one Saturday, time ticking hard on midnight

Ere an hour subserved, I set me upon it.

Long with coiled-up sleeves I cleaned and yet cleaned,

Till a first fresh spot, a high light, looked forth,

Then another, like fair flesh, and another;

Then a curve, a nostril, and next a finger,

Tapering, shapely, significantly pointing slantwise.

“Flemish?” I said. “Nay, Spanish... But, nay, Italian!”

- Then meseemed it the guise of the ranker Venus,

Named of some Astarte, of some Cotytto.

Down I knelt before it and kissed the panel,

Drunk with the lure of love's inhibited dreamings.

Till the dawn I rubbed, when there gazed up at me

A hag, that had slowly emerged from under my hands there,

Pointing the slanted finger towards a bosom

Eaten away of a rot from the lusts of a lifetime...

- I could have ended myself in heart-shook horror.

Stunned I sat till roused by a clear-voiced bell-chime,

Fresh and sweet as the dew-fleece under my luthern.

It was the matin service calling to me

From the adjacent steeple.