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| Thomas Gainsborough Rocky Landscape ca. 1783 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Mrs Hamilton Nisbet ca. 1777-88 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| William Hogarth Before 1731 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| William Hogarth After 1731 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
from A Hymn
When I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
I traveled to the page where scripture meets fiction.
The paper slept but the night woke me up.
Black letters were now alive
and collectible in a material crawl.
I could not decipher their intentions anymore.
To what end did their shapes come forth?
To seduce or speak truth?
While birds swept over the water
like pot-bellied angels
beautiful bells rang to assist the hoist.
Up they went to slake their thirst,
drinking from the mist
for the sound of bells seemed to free
as well as hold them.
Then down to scavenge the surf
and eat the innocent.
– Fanny Howe (2010)
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| George Morland Landscape with Figures ca. 1790-93 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| George Morland Morning, or, The Benevolent Sportsman 1792 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| George Morland The Public House Door 1792 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| George Morland The Smugglers 1792 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
from At Night the States
At night the states
accompany me while I sit here
or drums
there are always drums what for
so I
won't lose my way the name of
a
personality, say, not California
I am not
sad for you though I could be
I remember
climbing up a hill under tall
trees
getting home. I was
going to say that the air was
fair (I was
always saying something like
that) but
that's not it now, and that
that's not it
isn't it either
– Alice Notley (2006)
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| George Romney Portrait of Jane Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon and her son George, Marquess of Huntly 1778 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| George Romney Portrait of Mary Bootle, Mrs Wilbraham Bootle 1781 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| George Romney Portrait of Mrs Beal Bonnell 1780 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
from To Fashion
Gay Fashion thou Goddess so pleasing,
However imperious thy sway;
Like a mistress capricious and teasing,
Thy slaves tho' they murmur obey.
The simple, the wise, and the witty,
The learned, the dunce, and the fool,
The crooked, straight, ugly, and pretty,
Wear the badge of thy whimsical school.
Tho' thy shape be so fickle and changing,
That a Proteus thou art to the view;
And our taste so for ever deranging,
We know not which form to pursue.
Yet wave but thy frolicksome banners,
And hosts of adherent we see;
Arts, morals, religion, and manners,
Yield implicit obedience to thee.
– Elizabeth Moody (1737-1814)
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| George Stubbs Portrait of Joseph Smyth Esq, Lieutenant of Whittlebury Forest, Northamptonshire on a dapple-grey horse ca. 1762-64 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| George Stubbs The Marquess of Rockingham's Arabian stallion led by a groom at Creswell Crags ca. 1780 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| George Stubbs Gimcrack with John Pratt up, on Newmarket Heath ca. 1765 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)