James 'Athenian' Stuart Statue on the Choragic Monument of Thrasyllus, Athens 1787 etching and engraving Royal Academy of Arts, London |
James 'Athenian' Stuart View of the Eastern Front of the Parthenon (surrounded by modern buildings, soon to be demolished) 1787 etching and engraving Royal Academy of Arts, London |
Thomas Trotter after Henry Fuseli Brutus 1791 etching and engraving (Brutus often invoked, as here, to show support for the French Revolution) Royal Academy of Arts, London |
Thomas Banks The Falling Titan ca. 1795 etching (after a marble sculpture by Thomas Banks) Royal Academy of Arts, London |
William Bond after William Hilton The Falling Titan 1811 engraving (after a marble sculpture by Thomas Banks) Royal Academy of Arts, London |
James Barry Pandora 1804-1805 engraving Art Institute of Chicago |
George Stubbs Human Body - Lateral View 1804-1806 etching Royal Academy of Arts, London |
Tommaso Piroli after John Flaxman The Impostors 1807 etching (illustration to Dante's Divine Comedy) Royal Academy of Arts, London |
Tommaso Piroli after John Flaxman The Giant 1807 etching (illustration to Dante's Divine Comedy) Royal Academy of Arts, London |
Thomas Baxter Hercules, Minerva and Jupiter 1810 engraving Royal Academy of Arts, London |
Thomas Baxter Three Grecian Heads 1810 engraving Royal Academy of Arts, London |
James Birch Sharpe Écorché Figure 1818 etching (after antique statue, Paetus and Arria) Royal Academy of Arts, London |
James Birch Sharpe Écorché Figure 1818 etching (after antique statue, Borghese Gladiator) Royal Academy of Arts, London |
Thomas Stothard Design for the Wellington Shield 1820 etching Royal Academy of Arts, London |
Richard Roffe after G.L. Taylor and Edward Cresy Capital of Column, Temple of Mars Ultor, Rome 1821 etching Royal Academy of Arts, London |
attributed to Francis Cranmer Penrose Temple of Zeus Olympia 1851 wood-engraving (at left, the rope ladder used in the artists' ascent) Royal Academy of Arts, London |
This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.
Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.
The poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.
It is not sad, really, only empty.
Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.
It prefers to remember nothing.
Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.
Your type of beauty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.
You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes without guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.
Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forget the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been most beautiful in its erasures.
O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!
Nor is one silence equal to another.
And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you.
– Donald Justice (1973)