The Collector Cleans His Picture

Fili hominis, ecce ego tollo a te desiderabile oculorum tuorom in plaga. EZECH. xxiv. 16.     How I remember cleaning that strange picture!     I had been deep in duty for my sick neighbour -     His besides my own over several Sundays,     Often, too, in the week; so with parish pressures,     Baptisms, burials, doctorings, conjugal counsel -     All the whatnots asked of a rural parson -     Faith, I was well-nigh broken, should have been fully     Saving for one small secret relaxation,     One that in mounting manhood had grown my hobby.     This was to delve at whiles for easel-lumber,     Stowed in the backmost slums of a soon-reached city,     Merely on chance to uncloak some worthy canvas,     Panel, or plaque, blacked blind by uncouth adventure,     Yet under all concealing a precious art-feat.     Such I had found not yet. My latest capture     Came from the rooms of a trader in ancient house-gear     Who had no scent of beauty or soul for brushcraft.     Only a tittle cost it murked with grime-films,     Gatherings of slow years, thick-varnished over,     Never a feature manifest of man's painting.     So, one Saturday, time ticking hard on midnight     Ere an hour subserved, I set me upon it.     Long with coiled-up sleeves I cleaned and yet cleaned,     Till a first fresh spot, a high light, looked forth,     Then another, like fair flesh, and another;     Then a curve, a nostril, and next a finger,     Tapering, shapely, significantly pointing slantwise.     "Flemish?" I said. "Nay, Spanish . . . But, nay, Italian!"     - Then meseemed it the guise of the ranker Venus,     Named of some Astarte, of some Cotytto.     Down I knelt before it and kissed the panel,     Drunk with the lure of love's inhibited dreamings.     Till the dawn I rubbed, when there gazed up at me     A hag, that had slowly emerged from under my hands there,     Pointing the slanted finger towards a bosom     Eaten away of a rot from the lusts of a lifetime . . .     - I could have ended myself in heart-shook horror.     Stunned I sat till roused by a clear-voiced bell-chime,     Fresh and sweet as the dew-fleece under my luthern.     It was the matin service calling to me     From the adjacent steeple.