Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813–1892)

THEMES strong—verse bloodwarm with the limbs and veins

Of life at full-flush—yet as when one sees

Some unknown Grecian youth Praxiteles

Or Phidias raised from flesh on Attic plains

Into perennial marble—the coarse stains

Of corporal frailty cleansed by ministries

Of art divine from all impurities—

Till of crude fact the living soul remains:

So, with the touch of genius wrought this seer

Of passion and of truth, till heart and mind

Share in the vigor of the fleshly frame,

Though palpable to sense his forms appear,

In the soul’s life transfigured and refined,

The higher art that nature makes they claim.