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JuliusScipio — Artist, Take Up--
Published: 2012-02-24 03:34:46 +0000 UTC; Views: 1029; Favourites: 19; Downloads: 3
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Description
Oh beautiful artist, take up yourDark materials and sketch
The skies,
Hold this moment and that
Tight; Caress the grass and the
Trees with your pencil,
Let your pen sing love songs to
The curves of this face,
The soft textures of hair and fur and shirt and skin-
Oh artist, take up
The lonely calling, yours and
The child who waches in her own world,
That painting that lies on the wall...
As a lover, woo:
The world, our playmate and nursemaid,
Loves to be flattered. She will
Stand still for you for years and years,
Mountains holdingh patiently for
Many portraits over millenia,
Trees longing for the words and
Trembling in both fear and hope,
The virginal bated breath before
The carpenter's shaping hands and working
Hoping for that flattery, the small Apotheosis.
Oh artist, lose never your loving strokes
Nor sell delight to the highest bidder and say
Today I have done work.
Oh artist, let your heart be in secret or
Let it live beside you when you must feed yourself.
Let it say quietly that they know not what they do and ask
And Wait!
Wait
Wait
For the coming one who trembles and with held breath,
Thanks you for a painting not bought by him.
If he fearful and aweful asks, give unto him,
Speak to him,
Oh artist, nurture the souls of weary men who long to touch
And hold beautiful moments--
Oh artist love softly and long the loud and short world.
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Comments: 27
ah quite an up-lifting piece to the downcast artist. It has a great flow and a beautiful voice. I thoroughly enjoyed reading
hard to take you seriously though with that avatar...
haha no, I'm kidding...mostly
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hahaha. Thank you very much! I'm so happy that it brought you pleasure, for the poet loves the sounds of words and wishes them to spread and be savored by the passerby!
This is the only DA avatar I've ever had, actually! Usually, I was never able to have one because I was lazy/couldn't find a good one.
Don't hate on ponies! 
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welcome
very true!
haha well alright...I guess you get a pass.
hey man I'm cool with the ponies 
It isn't half-bad for a kids show.
I agree and it is refreshing to see people really kicking back and
enjoying life. sometimes we take ourselves and life too seriously (myself included haha).
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(Eeyup! It's part of why I love Horace, because he wrote the original "Chill and enjoy life" poem. He's the Carpe Diem guy. It's a wonderful poem, and he's an awesome poet, and in a lot of ways that's kind of his whole message, that people take things they shouldn't seriously and get caught up in dumb stuff. Highly recommend, with a good translation he's magnificent.)
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I'll check him out when I get a chance.
Always a good message.
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Your wonderful literary work has been chosen to be featured by DailyLitDeviations in a news article that can be found here [link]
Be sure to check out the other artists featured and show your support by 
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Oh my... thank you!
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I love how you managed to incorporate so many different arts in there. It reads quite vibrantly, and I can almost hear the expressions on your face and the gestures of your arms. You explained the travails of an artist quite superbly.
(Also, you have an extra "h" on holding.)
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bluhbluh 2/2 you are on wrong spelling!
Thank you!
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This gorgeous, especially the thought in the last line.
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This feels like real poetry, the type that I remember reading in English books when I was a senior in high school. So lofty that it's difficult to feel you fully understand what the writer meant in every line, but also close enough to home that any artist could feel the love directed to them, and both of those to me hold the charm. But in a way, the last bit of your blurb beneath the poem hits home most of all for me. I write everything, my novels, my poetry, it's all about war and often I try to have my characters find some small beauty in a world that has been destroyed by conflict. "Calculus of the howitzer", for some reason to me, is even more beautiful than the rest. Bravo, friend.
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I shivered a bit because "Calculus of the Howitzer" is a phrase that haunts me and I too love it greatly! I began brainstorming for a long poem around that idea once... perhaps I should return to it. Hahaha, and since we all do so, feel free to play off of it!
Thank you! I'm honored deeply-- the writer lives for communication as you know well and it is always a delight to know another has seen and received! In a very strange way, what you've written sort of hit *me* deeply-- war was the cradle the poem slept in. I was reading through Fallout Equestria and had this long, strange dream about a ruined, post apocalyptic landscape and I sort of cried, longing for graffiti or a doodle or a song. I remember my greatest longing was to remember just a snippet of "For I will Consider my Cat Geoffrey" or anything. So... I feel ya, bro? haha.
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Haha, yes, there's nothing quite like receiving some bit of love on a piece of writing. It's nice to get views and faves on my digital art too, but it just doesn't compare. I think the phrase really touched me because for the last week I've been gunning to finish the second novel I've been writing and my characters have just undergone the realization of needing to attend to, basically, the "ruthless calculus of war", as Mass Effect 3 puts it. I quite enjoyed the poem itself too, don't get me wrong, but you know I'm sure how writers can latch onto a phrase like a dog with a particularly good shoe. And way to hit the nail on the head--I played the game Fallout not long before I wrote my first novel, and I was so entranced by the idea of it's war, and by that extension, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that a few chunks of that obsession made it into my first book. And then I drove all my professors nuts because I wrote all of my nursing papers on radiation sickness. I digress.
Not to try and trade comments for comments--not at all--but I wonder if you might enjoy the most recent poem I wrote. [link] Keep on writing, you have a great poetic style that rubs me the right way.
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Thanks!
And I believe I shall!
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Oh wonderful!
Thank you!
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I love this. It's so incredibly inspiring. Thank you for writing it.
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You're very welcome, my friend.
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well spoken. often i get criticised because people dont think visual arts are practical and of any significance. but we artists are mostly real and not arrogant like we are portrayed by narrow minded people with no sense of sentimentality.. very soft flowing words you speak. and the truth too. thanks. keep up the good words
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Thank you!
When the bombs drop, we will miss Degas and Shakespeare longer than algebra and before we miss our gold.
I mean it- nurture the souls of man, artist.
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