Definitely in the top twenty of my poets. I include Keats, Frost, Service, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shakespeare...and a dozen others. I included Service to be ornery. Many count him as merely a storey teller. I honor him as one of the greatest story tellers in verse! He belongs in the top twenty.
"I haled me a woman from the street,
Shameless, but, oh, so fair!
I bade her sit in the model’s seat
And painted her sitting there.
I hid all traces of her heart unclean;
I painted a babe at her breast;
I painted her as she might have been
If the Worst had been the Best.
She laughed at my picture and went away.
Then came, with a knowing nod,
A connoisseur, and I heard him say;
“’Tis Mary, the Mother of God.”
So, I painted a halo round her hair,
And I sold her and took my fee,
And she hangs in the church of Saint Hillaire,
Where you and all may see." |
