Flemish Artists, Fifteenth Century
The Atlantic receives on an average as many as 1500 poems a month. They come as frequently from men as from women, and are evidence of an interest in poetry which never slackens. Is an incentive for those writers yet unestablished, we shall from time to time devote a number of pages to the work of young poets.
by LEAH BODINE DRAKE
WHAT they loved, what their brushes proudly caressed
Was their rich immediate North. They delighted to portray
The tapestried room with its mirrored dinanderie,
The fur on the burgher’s coat, the chain on His breast.
Was their rich immediate North. They delighted to portray
The tapestried room with its mirrored dinanderie,
The fur on the burgher’s coat, the chain on His breast.
Piety insisted only the holy, the past was worth
Rare powdered lapis lazuli or ground gold.
This problem faced each member of the painters’ guild:
How to honor both God and His sparkling Earth.
Rare powdered lapis lazuli or ground gold.
This problem faced each member of the painters’ guild:
How to honor both God and His sparkling Earth.
So their subjects are Martyrs, Flights into Egypt, Views of Canaan,
Hut Sodom, say, is a pepper-pot town in the rear
Where Lot’s wife tinily stiffens, while hugely at prayer
Down front is the patron’s wife in a horned hennin.
Hut Sodom, say, is a pepper-pot town in the rear
Where Lot’s wife tinily stiffens, while hugely at prayer
Down front is the patron’s wife in a horned hennin.
Angels are courtly mignons with crimped hair.
Paul suffers conversion near Damascus-gate
In full tilting-armor. The Baptist’s head on a plate
Watches Salome fiddle some Flemish air.
Paul suffers conversion near Damascus-gate
In full tilting-armor. The Baptist’s head on a plate
Watches Salome fiddle some Flemish air.
Sometimes they concede slightly to the real East,
And then we’ll get a Magus in a purple turban —
But his sleeves, as like as not, will be dagged and urban,
His squire a blond Flanderkin, hawk on wrist.
And then we’ll get a Magus in a purple turban —
But his sleeves, as like as not, will be dagged and urban,
His squire a blond Flanderkin, hawk on wrist.
Look at any Virgin’s Chamber, Annunciation . . . or rather, look
Through the room’s usual little window . . . what
Do you find there? Palms? Orient domes? You do not,
But steepled market-squares, or Dutch seas pale as milk
Through the room’s usual little window . . . what
Do you find there? Palms? Orient domes? You do not,
But steepled market-squares, or Dutch seas pale as milk
Hemming green thrifty polders where the haywains pass
Bringing the harvest home to the castle’s Dame,
God’s Mother, who may sit by the Gothic chimney’s flame
In a halo that’s part of an elegant screen of brass!
Bringing the harvest home to the castle’s Dame,
God’s Mother, who may sit by the Gothic chimney’s flame
In a halo that’s part of an elegant screen of brass!