C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Margaret Junkin Preston (1820–1897)
The Boy Van Dyck
I
Sat a comely, fair-haired dame,
At a window’s deep embrasure,
Bending o’er her broidery-frame.
Round her played her merry children,
As they wound about their heads
Fillets, pilfered in their mischief,
From her skeins of arras-threads.
Softly smiling at their play,
All the while her busy needle
Pricking in and out its way;
From the open casement gazing,
Where the landscape lay in view,
Striving from her silken treasures
To portray each varied hue.
As the threads dropped from her hold,
“Cannot match that steely sapphire,
Or that line of burnished gold.
How it sparkles as it stretches
Straight as any lance across!
Never hint of such a lustre
Lives within my brightest floss!
I could kneel with folded hands,
As I watch it slowly dying
Off the emerald pasture-lands.
How my crimson pales to ashen
In this flood of sunset hue,
Mocking all my poor endeavor,
Foiling all my skill can do!”
Pressed around their mother’s knees:
“Nay”—they clamored—“where in Antwerp
Are there broideries such as these?
Why, the famous master, Rubens,
Craves the piece we think so rare,—
Asks our father’s leave to paint it
Flung across the Emperor’s chair!”
As I draw my needle through,
Gloating o’er my tints, I fancy
I might be a painter too:
I, a woman, wife, and mother,
What have I to do with Art!
Are not ye my noblest pictures?
Portraits painted from my heart!
One should show the master’s bent,—
One should do the things I dream of,—
All my soul would rest content.”
Straight the four-year-old Antonio
Answered, sobbing half aloud:—
“I will be your painter, painting
Pictures that shall make you proud!”
Smoothing down his golden hair,
Kissing with a crazy rapture
Mouth and cheek and forehead fair—
Saying mid her sobbing laughter,
“So! my baby! you would like
To be named with Flemish Masters,
Rembrandt, Rubens, and—Van Dyck!”