Anna Montgomery, illustrious host of tonight’s
Meeting the Bar at dVerse, prompts us to try our hand at an erasure poem, a
type of found poem using an existing text. This is a very fun exercise—why don’t
you join in?
The artist did
not immediately reply, being startled by the apparition of a young child of strength that
was tumbling about on the carpet,--a little personage who had come mysteriously
out of the infinite, but with
something so sturdy and real in his composition that he seemed moulded out of the
densest substance which earth could supply. This hopeful infant crawled towards the
new-comer, and setting himself on end, as Robert Danforth expressed the
posture, stared at Owen with a look of such sagacious observation that the
mother could not help exchanging a proud glance with her husband. But the
artist was disturbed by the child's look, as imagining a resemblance between it
and Peter Hovenden's habitual expression. He could have fancied that the old
watchmaker was compressed into this baby shape, and looking out of those baby
eyes, and repeating, as he now did, the malicious question: "The
beautiful, Owen! How comes on the beautiful? Have you succeeded in creating the
beautiful?"
"I have succeeded," replied the artist, with a momentary light of
triumph in his eyes and a smile of sunshine, yet steeped in such depth of thought that it was almost
sadness.
"Yes, my friends, it is the truth. I have succeeded."
"Indeed!" cried Annie, a look of maiden mirthfulness
peeping out of her face again. "And is it lawful, now, to inquire what the
secret is?"
"Surely; it is to disclose it that I have come,"
answered Owen Warland. "You shall know, and see, and touch, and possess
the secret! For, Annie,--if by that name I may still address the friend of my
boyish years,--Annie, it is for your bridal gift that I have wrought this
spiritualized mechanism, this harmony of motion, this mystery of beauty. It
comes late, indeed; but it is as we go onward in life, when objects begin to
lose their freshness of hue and our souls their delicacy of perception, that
the spirit of beauty is most needed. If,--forgive me, Annie,--if you know
how--to value this gift, it can never come too late."
He produced,
as he spoke, what seemed a jewel box. It was carved richly out of ebony by his own hand, and
inlaid with a fanciful tracery of pearl, representing a boy in pursuit of a
butterfly, which, elsewhere, had become a winged spirit, and was flying
heavenward; while the boy, or youth, had found such efficacy in his strong
desire that he ascended from earth to cloud, and from cloud to celestial
atmosphere, to win the beautiful. This case of ebony the artist opened, and
bade Annie place her fingers on its edge. She did so, but almost screamed as a
butterfly fluttered forth, and, alighting on her finger's tip, sat waving the
ample magnificence of its purple and gold-speckled wings, as if in prelude to a
flight. It is impossible to
express by words the glory, the splendor, the delicate gorgeousness
which were softened into the beauty of this object. Nature's ideal butterfly
was here realized in all its perfection; not in the pattern of such faded insects as flit
among earthly flowers, but of those which hover across the meads of paradise
for child-angels and the spirits of departed infants to disport themselves
with. The rich down was visible upon its wings; the lustre of its eyes seemed instinct with
spirit.
Faded Lustre
The artist
startled
with something so real
moulded this hopeful
momentary light
yet steeped
in such depth of sadness
produced by his own hand
as if
to express by words
the pattern of faded
lustre
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This is from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “The
Artist of the Beautiful.” I just read this yesterday so it was fresh in my mind—not
particularly creative with the design here, but such as it is. I pretty
much left it as I found it, without punctuation. The only change—I de-capitalized the “T”
in “this” (line 3). I thought hard about replacing “lustre” with the word “paradise,”
and still think it might be better. I stuck with lustre for now since I used
the word “light” in line 4. Seems to be more consistent, but either word feels
right.
