ABSTRACT
Charles Kains-Jackson. From The Artist, 1 May 1889. Full title ‘On a picture by H. S. Tuke in the present exhibition of the New English Art Club’. Within this little space of canvas shut Are summer sunshine, and the exuberant glee Of living light that laughs along the sea, And freshness of kind winds; yet these are but As the rich gem whereon the cameo’s cut; The cameo’s self, the boyish faces free From care, the beauty and the delicacy Of young slim frames not yet to labour put. The kisses that make red each honest face Are of the breeze and salt and tingling spray. So, may these boys know never of a place Wherein, to desk or factory a prey, That colour blanches slowly, nature’s grace Made pale with life’s incipient decay.
