"Yes, it is the queenly moon Walking through her starred saloon, Silvering all she looks upon: I am her Endymion; For by night she comes to me,-- O, I love her wondrously.
She into my window looks, As I sit with lamp and books, And the night-breeze stirs the leaves, And the dew drips down the eaves; O'er my shoulder peepeth she, O, she loves me royally!
Then she tells me many a tale, With her smile, so sheeny pale, Till my soul is overcast With such dream-light of the past, That I saddened needs must be, And I love her mournfully.
Oft I gaze up in her eyes, Raying light through winter skies; Far away she saileth on; I am no Endymion; O, she is too bright for me, And I love her hopelessly!
Now she comes to me again, And we mingle joy and pain, Now she walks no more afar, Regal with train-bearing star, But she bends and kisses me-- O, we love now mutually!"
This has the very sheen of moonlight upon it, and certainly is to be preferred to Dr. Johnson's scholastic "Endymion":
"Diana, huntress chaste and fair, Now thy hounds have gone to sleep,"--
If Cranch had continued in this line, and perhaps have improved upon it, he would surely have become one of the foremost American poets, but a poet cannot live by verse alone, and after he began to be thoroughly in earnest with his painting, his rhythmic genius fell into the background. From Marseilles George W. Curtis proceeded to Egypt, where he wrote his well known book of Nile travels, while Cranch set out for Rome to perfect his art.
He studied there at a night-school, painting in water colors from nude models and arrangements of drapery, but not taking lessons from any regular instructor. He never applied himself much to figure-painting, however. He sold his paintings chiefly to American travellers, and when the Revolution broke out in 1848, he returned to Sorrento, where his second child, Mrs. Leonora Scott, was born. His first child was born the year previous, in Rome, but afterwards died. In 1851, he returned to New York and Fishkill, but not meeting with such good appreciation there as he had in Italy, he went to Europe again in the autumn of 1853, and resided in Paris. One cause of this may have been the unfriendliness of his brother-in-law, who was a leading art critic in New York City, and who disliked Cranch on account of his wife, and never neglected an opportunity of disparaging his work.