ODE TO GERALD FESTUS KELLY
CURLED eyelids that hide like a beetle
Black eyes that grow green for an hour ;
The weary wide limbs and the leetle
White hands, like a boot in a bower ;
When thou art gone down, as a jelly,
What shall rest of us then, as we part,
O mystic and dolorous Kelly,
Apostle of Art!
Seven sorrows are sung by the Herald :?
But thy daubs, which are seventy times seven,
Will kill me my militant Gerald,
And then they will haunt me in heaven ;
Fierce eyebrow or famishing bosom,
Rossetti or Aubrey or Jones,
Some buxom, some frail as the dew, some
Mere bags full of bones.
You shift and bedeck and bedrape them
(Though some are both nude and antique) :—
Your epigrams, who shall escape them?
Your metaphors often oblique ?
With words you have beaten and blessed us,
You caused us to shudder and smart,
O subtle, spontaneous Festus,
Apostle of Art!
1 This phrase is, and must remain obscure, as I can’t remember what,
if anything, I meant by it.
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