Brother Artist! + 

Brother artist, help me; come! + 

Artists are a maimed band: + 

I have words but not a hand; + 

Thou hast hands though thou art dumb. + 

Had I thine, when words did fail⁠— + 

Vassal-words their hasting chief, + 

On the white awaiting leaf + 

Shapes of power should tell the tale. + 

Had I hers of music-might, + 

I would shake the air with storm + 

Till the red clouds trailed enorm + 

Boreal dances through the night. + 

Had I his whose foresight rare + 

Piles the stones with lordliest art, + 

From the quarry of my heart + 

Love should climb a heavenly stair! + 

Had I his whose wooing slow + 

Wins the marble’s hidden child, + 

Out in passion undefiled + 

Stood my Psyche, white as snow! + 

Maimed, a little help I pray; + 

Words suffice not for my end; + 

Let thy hand obey thy friend, + 

Say for me what I would say. + 

Draw me, on an arid plain + 

With hoar-headed mountains nigh, + 

Under a clear morning sky + 

Telling of a night of rain, + 

Huge and half-shaped, like a block + 

Chosen for sarcophagus + 

By a Pharaoh glorious, + 

One rude solitary rock. + 

Cleave it down along the ridge + 

With a fissure yawning deep + 

To the heart of the hard heap, + 

Like the rent of riving wedge. + 

Through the cleft let hands appear, + 

Upward pointed with pressed palms + 

As if raised in silent psalms + 

For salvation come anear. + 

Turn thee now⁠—’tis almost done!⁠— + 

To the near horizon’s verge: + 

Make the smallest arc emerge + 

Of the forehead of the sun. + 

One thing more⁠—I ask too much!⁠— + 

From a brow which hope makes brave + 

Sweep the shadow of the grave + 

With a single golden touch. + 

Thanks, dear painter; that is all. + 

If thy picture one day should + 

Need some words to make it good, + 

I am ready to thy call. + 