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| Herman van Swanevelt Landscape with trees and figures before 1655 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| attributed to Herman van Swanevelt Landscape with figures and antique ruins before 1655 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
from The Sheep in the Ruins
You, my friends, and you strangers, all of you,
Stand with me a little by the walls
Or where the walls once were.
The bridge was here, the city further:
Now there is neither bridge nor town –
A doorway where the roof is down
Opens on a foot-worn stair
That climbs by three steps into empty air.
(What foot went there?)
Nothing in this town that had a thousand steeples
Lives now but these flocks of sheep
Grazing the yellow grasses where the bricks lie dead beneath:
Dogs drive them with their brutal teeth.
– Archibald MacLeish (1952)
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| Herman van Swanevelt Wooded landscape with river god and nymph emerging from the water 1642 drawing British Museum |
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| attributed to Herman van Swanevelt Temple ruin, Tivoli before 1655 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
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| Herman van Swanevelt Landscape with figures (unused design for title-page for a series of etchings) ca. 1644-46 drawing British Museum |
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| Herman van Swanevelt Landscape with three figures on a road by a river ca. 1649 drawing British Museum |
from Salt
The dead are given permission to walk among us.
They smile dead smiles, they have no need for speech.
The familiar goes for nothing. Each evening,
they hold up to our windows their silent, smiling children.
– David Harsent (2016)
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| Herman van Swanevelt Landscape with herdsmen and cattle 1649 drawing British Museum |
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| Herman van Swanevelt Italian landscape with man, woman and baby in foreground ca. 1640-45 drawing British Museum |
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| Herman van Swanevelt Italianate landscape with travelers on a road ca. 1646 drawing British Museum |
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| Herman van Swanevelt Italianate landscape with goatherd and woman ca. 1640-55 drawing British Museum |
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| Herman van Swanevelt Italian landscape with bridge and women washing clothes in the stream ca. 1650-55 drawing British Museum |
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| Herman van Swanevelt Italian landscape with figures on a road ca, 1650-55 drawing British Museum |
from Et in Arcadia Ego
The living days are over, and I remember
Only where I have failed, as any might,
On this or that occasion, with him or her,
When almost could perhaps have turned to quite.
So ends a journey which was hardly necessary,
Or so it seems, but what is done is done:
Fact has replaced illusion, and I see
With what ineptitude the course was run.
– C.H. Sisson (1991)
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| Herman van Swanevelt Italian landscape before 1655 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Herman van Swanevelt Arcadian landscape before 1655 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Herman van Swanevelt Landscape with two figures on a road passing large fallen boulder ca. 1649-55 drawing British Museum |
– poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)