Explore "The Artist" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He stood before his finished work; / His heart beat warm and high; / But they who gazed upon the youth / Knew well that he must die.
For many days a fever fierce / Had burned into his life; / But full of high impassioned art, / He bore the fearful strife.
And wrought in ecstasy and hope / The image of his brain; / He felt the death throes at his heart, / But labored through the pain.
The statue seemed to glow with life -- / A costly work of art; / For it he paid the fervent blood / From his own eager heart.
With kindling eye and flushing cheek / But slowly laboring breath, / He gazed upon his finished work, / Then sought his couch of death.
And when the plaudits of the crowd / Came like the south wind's breath, / The dreamy, gifted child of art / Had closed his eyes in death.