A Pindarick Ode on Painting

A few blended colours, Morrison says, can make “a new creation rise”—and suddenly a painted battlefield seems to thunder, its horses springing at the charge. Can a poem make us see with such force?

In this 1767 ode addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Morrison celebrates painting’s power to tell a story in a glance and stir the heart. He moves from the clash of Roman and Greek armies to a ship battered beneath a lurid sky, then into pastoral landscapes and portraits whose faces seem to disclose the mind within. Yet beauty is fragile, and even the finest likeness must contend with time. Morrison’s verse pays tribute to the painter while testing the reach of its own art: can poetry preserve what the canvas makes live?

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