“Oh, beautiful picture!” the fair Ellen cried,
    “I must see thee again or I die.” 
Then under her white chin her bonnet she tied,
And after the youth and the picture she hied,
    When the youth, looking back, met her eye.

“Fair damsel,” said he (and he chuckled the while)
  “This picture I see you admire: 
Then take it, I pray you, perhaps ’twill beguile
Some moments of sorrow; (nay, pardon my smile)
  Or, at least, keep you home by the fire.”

Then Ellen the gift with delight and surprise
  From the cunning young stripling receiv’d. 
But she knew not the poison that enter’d her eyes,
When sparkling with rapture they gaz’d on her prize—­
  Thus, alas, are fair maidens deceiv’d!

’Twas a youth o’er the form of a statue inclin’d,
  And the sculptor he seem’d of the stone;
Yet he languished as tho’ for its beauty he pin’d
And gaz’d as the eyes of the statue so blind
  Reflected the beams of his own.

Twas the tale of the sculptor Pygmalion of old;
  Fair Ellen remember’d, and sigh’d;
“Ah, could’st thou but lift from that marble so cold,
Thine eyes too imploring, thy arms should enfold,
  And press me this day as thy bride.”

She said:  when, behold, from the canvass arose
  The youth, and he stepp’d from the frame: 
With a furious transport his arms did enclose
The love-plighted Ellen:  and, clasping, he froze
  The blood of the maid with his flame!

She turn’d and beheld on each shoulder a wing. 
  “Oh, heaven! cried she, who art thou?”
From the roof to the ground did his fierce answer ring,
As frowning, he thunder’d " I am the PAINT-KING! 
  And mine, lovely maid, thou art now!”

Then high from the ground did the grim monster lift
  The loud screaming maid like a blast;
And he sped through the air like a meteor swift,
While the clouds, wand’ring by him, did fearfully drift
  To the right and the left as he pass’d.

Now suddenly sloping his hurricane flight,
  With an eddying whirl he descends;
The air all below him becomes black as night,
And the ground where he treads, as if mov’d with affright,
  Like the surge of the Caspian bends.

“I am here!” said the Fiend, and he thundering knock’d
  At the gates of a mountainous cave;
The gates open flew, as by magick unlocked,
While the peaks of the mount, reeling to and fro, rock’d
  Like an island of ice on the wave.

“Oh, mercy!” cried Ellen, and swoon’d in his arms,
  But the PAINT-KING, he scoff’d at her pain. 
“Prithee, love,” said the monster, “what mean these alarms?”
She hears not, she sees not the terrible charms,
  That work her to horrour again.

She opens her lids, but no longer her eyes
  Behold the fair youth she would woo;
Now appears the PAINT-KING in his natural guise;
His face, like a palette of villainous dies,
  Black and white, red, and yellow, and blue.