The Painter Puzzled

“Draw, Sir!”

—Old Play.

WELL, something must be done for May,
The time is drawing nigh,
To figure in the catalogue
And woo the public eye.

Something I must invent and paint;
But, oh! my wit is not
Like one of those kind substantives
The answer Who and What?

Oh, for some happy hit! to throw
The gazer in a trance;
But posé là—there I am posed,
As people say in France.

In vain I sit and strive to think,
I find my head, alack!
Painfully empty, still, just like
A bottle “on the rack.”

In vain I task my barren brain
Some new idea to catch,
And tease my hair—ideas are shy
Of “coming to the scratch.”

In vain I stare upon the air,
No mental visions dawn;
A blank my canvas still remains,
And worse—a blank undrawn:

An “aching void” that mars my rest
With one eternal hint,
For, like the little goblin page,
It still keeps crying “Tint!”

But what to tint? ay, there’s the rub,
That plagues me all the while,
As, Selkirk-like, I sit without
A subject for my i’le.

“Invention’s seventh heaven” the bard
Has written—but my case
Persuades me that the creature dwells
In quite another place.

Sniffing the lamp, the ancients thought,
Demosthenes must toil;
But works of art are works indeed,
And always “smell of oil.”

Yet painting pictures some folks think,
Is merely play and fun;
That what is on an easel set
Must easily be done.

But, zounds! if they could sit in this
Uneasy easy-chair,
They’d very soon be glad enough
To cut the camel’s hair.

Oh! who can tell the pang it is
To sit as I this day—
With all my canvas spread, and yet
Without an inch of way.

Till, mad at last to find I am
Amongst such empty skullers,
I feel that I could strike myself,
But no—I’ll “strike my colours.”