Two Pictures Poem by Kim Barney

Kim Barney

Kim Barney

I was born in a bank - - my mother went there and made a deposit

Two Pictures

Rating: 5.0


Two pictures hung on a dingy wall
of a grand old Florentine hall - -

one of a child of beauty rare,
with a cherub face and golden hair;
the lovely look of whose radiant eyes
filled the soul with thoughts of Paradise.

The other was a visage vile
marked with the lines of lust and guile,
a loathsome being, whose features fell
brought to the soul weird thoughts of hell.

Side by side in their frames of gold,
dingy and dusty and cracked and old,
this is the solemn tale they told:

A youthful painter found one day,
in the streets of Rome, a child at play,
and, moved by the beauty it bore,
the heavenly look that its features wore,
on a canvas, radiant and grand,
he painted its face with a master hand.

Year after year on his wall it hung,
‘Twas ever joyful and always young - -
driving away all thoughts of gloom
while the painter toiled in his dingy room.

Like an angel of light it met his gaze,
bringing him dreams of his boyhood days,
filling his soul with a sense of praise.

His raven ringlets grew thin and gray,
his young ambition all passed away;
yet he looked for years in many a place,
to find a contrast to that sweet face.

Through haunts of vice in the night he stayed
to find some ruin that crime had made.
At last in a prison cell he caught
a glimpse of the hideous fiend he sought.

On a canvas weird and wild but grand
He painted the face with a master hand.

His task was done; ‘twas a work sublime - -
an angel of joy and a fiend of crime - -
a lesson of life from the wrecks of time.

O Crime: with ruin thy road is strewn;
the brightest beauty the world has known
thy power has wasted, till in the mind
no trace of its presence is left behind.

The loathsome wretch in the dungeon low,
with the face of a fiend and a look of woe,
ruined by revels of crime and sin,
a pitiful wreck of what might have been,
hated and shunned, and without a home,
was the CHILD that played in the streets of Rome.

(Author Unknown)

Thursday, December 19, 2019
Topic(s) of this poem: poem
POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
One of my favorite poems. Not found on Poem Hunter previously, as far as I know, so I share it with you.

19 December 2019

This comes from the book
The Best-Loved Poems of the American People
published by Doubleday in 1936,

so, unless your name is Wes Vogler, this poem is older than you are.

Actually, this poem is probably even older than Wes, He was born in 1930, but who knows how long it took Doubleday to collect all these poems, and how long to put the book together? And how many years before that was the poem floating around?
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Anjandev Roy 25 January 2021

Superb.......

1 0 Reply
Hazel Durham 21 December 2019

I love this brilliant poem of beauty that changes and fades as the passing of time is cruel!

4 0 Reply
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Kim Barney

Kim Barney

I was born in a bank - - my mother went there and made a deposit
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