O, hair of gold! O, crimson lips! O, face
Made for the luring and the love of man!
With thee I do forget the toil and stress,
The loveless road that knows no resting place,
Time's straitened pulse, the soul's dread weariness,
My freedom, and my life republican!
That phrase "wan lily" represented perfectly what I had tried to convey,
not only in this part but in Ophelia. I hope I thanked Oscar enough at
the time. Now he is dead, and I cannot thank him any more.... I had so
much _bad_ poetry written to me that these lovely sonnets from a real
poet should have given me the greater pleasure. "He often has the poet's
heart, who never felt the poet's fire." There is more good _heart_ and
kind feeling in most of the verses written to me than real poetry.
"One must discriminate," even if it sounds unkind. At the time that
Whistler was having one of his most undignified "rows" with a sitter
over a portrait and wrangling over the price, another artist was
painting frescoes in a cathedral for nothing. "It is sad that it should
be so," a friend said to me, "but _one must discriminate_. The man
haggling over the sixpence is the great artist!"
How splendid it is that _in time_ this is recognized.
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