The Poetical Writings of Fitz-Greene Halleck/To the Directors of the Academy of Arts
TO THE DIRECTORS OF THE ACADEMY
OF ARTS.
llustrious autocrats of taste!
Inspectors of the wonders traced
By pencil, brush, or chisel!
Accept a nameless poet’s lay,
Who longs to twine a sprig of bay
Around his penny whistle.
Ye learned and enlightened few
Who keep the portal of virtu,
I pray you now unlock it,
And grant a peep, for all my pains,
Within your oil-bedaubed domains,
The Dome where now the poor in brains
Succeed the poor in pocket.
All honored be the rich repast
At which the sage decree was past
Of pauper health so tender,
Which sent the beggars to Bellevue,
And left the classic fame to you
And Scudder’s Witch of Endor.
Obliging all, you fear no harm
From Disappointment’s angry arm,
No cudgels, sneers, or libels;
Alike you smile on worst and best,
From great Rubens and Quaker West,
To wooden cuts for Bibles.
Lo! next the Gallic thunderbolt,
Some nameless, shapeless, ugly dolt,
His plastic phiz advances;
And vestal footsteps lightly tread,
And Cupids sport around the head
Of gentle Doctor Francis.
While placed on high exalted pegs,
Apollo blushes for his legs,
And mourns his severed fingers;
Some amorous wight, with passion drunk,
O’er Cytherea’s headless trunk
Luxuriously lingers.
Here Danaë rolls her humid eyes
To meet the ruler of the skies
In tricks that please old Satan;
And there our eyes delighted trace
The scarlet coat and lily face
Of gallant Captain Creighton.71
Here West’s creative pencil shines,
And paints, in tear-compelling lines,
Polony’s frenzied daughter;
A hang-dog king, and sheepish queen,
And her, who looks as if she’d been
Just fished up from the water!
Thy glories, too, are blazoned there,
King Ben’s first-born immortal heir—
Apparent to the pallet;
Orlando weighs his cons and pros,
Forgetting quite his heedless toes
Are in the Phoca’s gullet.
