I watched and waited with a steadfast will:
And, tho' the object seemed to flee away
That I so longed for, ever, day by day,
I watched and waited still.
Sometimes I said,--"This thing shall be no more;
My expectation wearies, and shall cease;
I will resign it now, and be at peace:"--
Yet never gave it o'er.
Sometimes I said,--"It is an empty name
I long for; to a name why should I give
The peace of all the days I have to live?"--
Yet gave it all the same.
Alas! thou foolish one,--alike unfit
For healthy joy and salutary pain,
Thou knowest the chase useless, and again
Turnest to follow it.
The Purpose and Tendency of Early Italian Art
The object we have proposed to ourselves in writing on Art, has been
"an endeavour to encourage and enforce an entire adherence to the
simplicity of nature; and also to direct attention, as an auxiliary
medium, to the comparatively few works which Art has yet produced in
this spirit." It is in accordance with the former and more prominent
of these objects that the writer proposes at present to treat.
An unprejudiced spectator of the recent progress and main direction
of Art in England will have observed, as a great change in the
character of the productions of the modern school, a marked attempt
to lead the taste of the public into a new channel by producing pure
transcripts and faithful studies from nature, instead of
conventionalities and feeble reminiscences from the Old Masters; an
entire seeking after originality in a more humble manner than has
been practised since the decline of Italian Art in the Middle Ages.
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