The Artist and the Ogre

Fable dungeon of the night
In solitude by candlelight
A painter paints on canvas white
She paints upon a canvas white.

And soft the candle flame doth bear
A queenly spirit fleeting there
Who holds between her hands, imprisoned
A rare imagination prism.

And through that prism colours fall
Purples, ochres, sweet and raw
In ribbon-streams and rainbow-beams
That splash and flow like waterfalls.

While yonder frame of oak and ore
Her jailor and protector stalks
An ogre with an ogre's warmth
An ireful, iron overlord.

And through the rusting bars he takes
One by one her rainbow-paints
While barely dry these canvas schemes
Pass between the friend and fiend.

Worse, that through those bars he takes
To cast upon the fire's grate!
Her window scenes - her emerald themes
Dissolving there to ashen dreams.

Fable dungeon of the night-time
Her rainbow-paints her only life-line
And as the candle splashes lime upon the wall
Another canvas window doth she draw.

But why this churlish churn?
Well, for a start, his heart is blind to art
His eyes worn thin with misery
And in the end, well, it's cold for him
And anyway, there's nothing else to burn.