poliphilo

When a poem is handed to you in a dream you don't tell it to get lost.

In the dream it was clear it was a very good poem. The actuality is what it is. Only the final line survives verbatim from the dream, the rest is interpretation:

A Victorian Painter

School of Constable. His bigger oils
Go well with panelling. He wrote a book
On Emerson- self-published, very rare.
(I haven't read it; no-one has
This century.) The early years
Are unresearched, an early marriage ended
In separation. He lived near Hampstead Heath
With Herbert Sweet, a bank clerk, latterly
With a surviving daughter, Isabel,
The widow of an Indian mathematician
And authoress of theosophical tracts,
At whom (an anecdote at last!) her mother
Once threw a heavy walking shoe, exclaiming,
"Get Kumar to protect you from the rich!"