Poetry In Motion

Auguste Delatre, 1822 - 1907

Know ye what etching is? It is to ramble

On copper; in a summer twilight’s hour

To let sweet Fancy fiddle tunefully.

It is the whispering from Nature’s heart,

Heard when we wander on the moor, or gaze

On the sea, on fleecy clouds of heaven, or at

The rushy lake when playful ducks are splashing:

It is the down of doves, the eagle’s claw;

‘Tis Homer in a nutshell, ten commandments

Writ on a penny’s surface; ‘tis a wish,

A sigh, comprised in finely-chiseled odes,

A little image in its bird’s-flight caught.

It is to paint on the soft gold-hued copper

With sting of wasp and velvet of the wings

Of butterfly, by sparkling sunbeams glowed.

Even so the etcher’s needle, on its point,

Doth catch what in the artist-poet’s mind

Reality and fancy did create.

Carel Vosmakr

1826 – 1888

Dutch poet and art critic.