Have you ever wondered what fuels the passion, the struggles, and the magic behind an artist’s work?
These ten poems take you beyond the surface, revealing the complex layers of creativity, emotion, and vision that define an artist’s world.
Get swept into an artist’s universe, where imagination blends with reality in unexpected ways.
Let’s dive in!
My favorite poem about artists
#1 “Art’s Discipline” by Robert Fuller Murray
Long since I came into the school of Art,
A child in works, but not a child in heart.
Slowly I learn, by her instruction mild,
To be in works a man, in heart a child.
This poem resonates with me because it beautifully captures the delicate balance between the innocence of creativity and the responsibilities of adulthood.
The poem reminds me that while we grow in skill and understanding, we should never lose our childlike wonder and passion for art.
9 more poems about artists
#2 “To His Lute” by William Drummond
My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow
With thy green mother in some shady grove,
When immelodious winds but made thee move,
And birds their ramage did on thee bestow.
Since that dear Voice which did thy sounds approve,
Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow,
Is reft from Earth to tune those spheres above,
What art thou but a harbinger of woe?
Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more,
But orphans’ wailings to the fainting ear;
Each stroke a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear;
For which be silent as in woods before:
Or if that any hand to touch thee deign,
Like widow’d turtle still her loss complain
#3 “Paint Me As I Am, Warts And All—Cromwell” by Joseph Horatio Chant
Brave soul, ’twere well if all the same would say,
And artists aim their patron’s wish t’obey.
What signifies a wart, or e’en a scar?
Leave both, skilled hand, and paint us as we are.
The crowfeet paint, the wrinkles on the brow,
The hollow cheek, the form inclined to bow,
The tear-dim’d eye, the hair well streaked with gray,
The hardened hand, begrim’d with soot and clay,
And if you use the seer’s revealing glass,
Remember this, “All flesh is as the grass.”
#4 “A Poet’s Sonnet” by Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell
If I should quit thee, sacrifice, forswear,
To what, my art, shall I give thee in keeping?
To the long winds of heaven? Shall these come sweeping
My songs forgone against my face and hair?
Or shall the mountain streams my lost joys bear,
My past poetic pain in the rain be weeping?
No, I shall live a poet waking, sleeping,
And I shall die a poet unaware.
From me, my art, thou canst not pass away;
And I, a singer though I cease to sing,
Shall own thee without joy in thee or woe.
Through my indifferent words of every day,
Scattered and all unlinked the rhymes shall ring
And make my poem; and I shall not know.
#5 “The Poet’s Simple Faith” by Victor-Marie Hugo
You say, “Where goest thou?” I cannot tell,
And still go on. If but the way be straight,
It cannot go amiss! before me lies
Dawn and the Day; the Night behind me; that
Suffices me; I break the bounds; I see,
And nothing more; believe, and nothing less.
My future is not one of my concerns.
#6 “The Cello” by Richard Watson Gilder
When late I heard the trembling cello play,
In every face I read sad memories
That from dark, secret chambers where they lay
Rose, and looked forth from melancholy eyes.
So every mournful thought found there a tone
To match despondence: sorrow knew its mate;
Ill fortune sighed, and mute despair made moan;
And one deep chord gave answer, “Late,—too late.”
Then ceased the quivering strain, and swift returned
Into its depths the secret of each heart;
Each face took on its mask, where lately burned
A spirit charmed to sight by music’s art;
But unto one who caught that inner flame
No face of all can ever seem the same.
#7 “Michelangelo” by Vachel Lindsay
Would I might wake in you the whirl-wind soul
Of Michelangelo, who hewed the stone
And Night and Day revealed, whose arm alone
Could draw the face of God, the titan high
Whose genius smote like lightning from the sky –
And shall he mold like dead leaves in the grave?
Nay he is in us! Let us dare and dare.
God help us to be brave.
#8 “The Sculptor And The Statue Of Jupiter” by Jean de La Fontaine
A block of marble was so fine,
To buy it did a sculptor hasten.
‘What shall my chisel, now ’tis mine –
A god, a table, or a basin?’
‘A god,’ said he, ‘the thing shall be;
I’ll arm it, too, with thunder.
Let people quake, and bow the knee
With reverential wonder.’
So well the cunning artist wrought
All things within a mortal’s reach,
That soon the marble wanted nought
Of being Jupiter, but speech.
Indeed, the man whose skill did make
Had scarcely laid his chisel down,
Before himself began to quake,
And fear his manufacture’s frown.
And even this excess of faith
The poet once scarce fell behind,
The hatred fearing, and the wrath,
Of gods the product of his mind.
This trait we see in infancy
Between the baby and its doll,
Of wax or china, it may be –
A pocket stuff’d, or folded shawl.
Imagination rules the heart:
And here we find the fountain head
From whence the pagan errors start,
That o’er the teeming nations spread.
With violent and flaming zeal,
Each takes his own chimera’s part;
Pygmalion doth a passion feel
For Venus chisel’d by his art.
All men, as far as in them lies,
Create realities of dreams.
To truth our nature proves but ice;
To falsehood, fire it seems.
#9 “My Table” by W. B. Yeats
Two heavy tressels, and a board
Where Sato’s gift, a changeless sword,
By pen and paper lies,
That it may moralise
My days out of their aimlessness.
A bit of an embroidered dress
Covers its wooden sheath.
Chaucer had not drawn breath
When it was forged. In Sato’s house,
Curved like new moon, moon luminous
It lay five hundred years;
Yet if no change appears
No moon: only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art.
Our learned men have urged
That when and where ’twas forged
A marvellous accomplishment,
In painting or in pottery, went
From father unto son
And through the centuries ran
And seemed unchanging like the sword.
Soul’s beauty being most adored,
Men and their business took
The soul’s unchanging look;
For the most rich inheritor,
Knowing that none can pass heaven’s door
That loved inferior art,
Had such an aching heart
That he, although a country’s talk
For silken clothes and stately walk,
Had waking wits; it seemed
Juno’s peacock screamed.
#10 “Artist’s Life” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Of all the waltzes the great Strauss wrote,
Mad with melody, rhythm – rife
From the very first to the final note.
Give me his “Artist’s Life!”
It stirs my blood to my finger-ends,
Thrills me and fills me with vague unrest,
And all that is sweetest and saddest blends
Together within my breast.
It brings back that night in the dim arcade,
In love’s sweet morning and life’s best prime,
When the great brass orchestra played and played,
And set our thoughts to rhyme.
It brings back that Winter of mad delights,
Of leaping pulses and tripping feet,
And those languid moon-washed Summer nights
When we heard the band in the street.
It brings back rapture and glee and glow,
It brings back passion and pain and strife,
And so of all the waltzes I know,
Give me the “Artist’s Life.”
For it is so full of the dear old time –
So full of the dear old friends I knew.
And under its rhythm, and lilt, and rhyme,
I am always finding – YOU.