But do not let us quarrel any more,No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,Treat his own subject after his own way,Fix his own time, accept too his own price,And shut the money into this small handWhen next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?Oh, I'll content him—but to-morrow. Love! 10I often am much wearier than you think,This evening more than usual, and it seemsAs if—forgive now—should you let me sitHere by the window with your hand in mineAnd look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,Both of one mind, as married people use,Quietly, quietly the evening through,I might get up to-morrow to my workCheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this! 20Your soft hand is a woman of itself,And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside.Don't count the time lost, neither; you must serveFor each of the five pictures we require:It saves a model. So! keep looking so—My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!—How could you ever prick those perfect ears,Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet—My face, my moon, my everybody's moon,Which everybody looks on and calls his, 30And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,While she looks—no one's: very dear, no less.You smile? why, there's my picture ready made,There's what we painters call our harmony!A common grayness silvers everything—All in a twilight, you and I alike—You, at the point of your first pride in me(That's gone you know)—but I, at every point;My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned downTo yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. 40There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top;That length of convent-wall across the wayHolds the trees safer, huddled more inside;The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,And autumn grows, autumn in everything.Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape—As if I saw alike my work and selfAnd all that I was born to be and do,A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand.How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; 50So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!This chamber for example—turn your head—All that's behind us! You don't understandNor care to understand about my art,But you can hear at least when people speak:And that cartoon, the second from the door—It is the thing. Love! so such things should be—Behold Madonna!—I am bold to say.I can do with my pencil what I know, 60What I see, what at bottom of my heartI wish for, if I ever wish so deep—Do easily, too—when I say, perfectly,I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge,Who listened to the Legate's talk last week,And just as much they used to say in France.At any rate 'tis easy, all of it!No sketches first, no studies, that's long past:I do what many dream of, all their lives,—Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, 70And fail in doing. I could count twenty suchOn twice your fingers, and not leave this town,Who strive—you don't know how the others striveTo paint a little thing like that you smearedCarelessly passing with your robes afloat—Yet do much less, so much less. Someone says,(I know his name, no matter)—so much less!Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.There burns a truer light of God in them,In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, 80Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to promptThis low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,Enter and take their place there sure enough,Though they come back and cannot tell the world.My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.The sudden blood of these men! at a word—Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.I, painting from myself and to myself, 90Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blameOr their praise either. Somebody remarksMorello's outline there is wrongly traced,His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,Sightly traced and well ordered; what of that?Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grayPlacid, and perfect with my art: the worse!I know both what I want and what might gain, 100And yet how profitless to know, to sigh"Had I been two, another and myself,Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt.Yonder's a work now, of that famous youthThe Urbinate who died five years ago.('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.)Well, I can fancy how he did it all,Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,Above and through his art—for it gives way; 110That arm is wrongly put—and there again—A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,He means right—that, a child may understand.Still, what an arm! and I could alter it:But all the play, the insight and the stretch—Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul,We might have risen to Rafael, I and you!Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think— 120More than I merit, yes, by many times.But had you—oh, with the same perfect brow,And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,And the low voice my soul hears, as a birdThe fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare—Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged"God and the glory! never care for gain.The present by the future, what is that?Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo! 130Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"I might have done it for you. So it seems:Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules.Beside, incentives come from the soul's self;The rest avail not. Why do I need you?What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo?In this world, who can do a thing, will not;And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:Yet the will's somewhat—somewhat, too, the power—And thus we half-men struggle. At the end, 140God, I conclude, compensates, punishes.'T is safer for me, if the award be strict,That I am something underrated here,Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth.I dared not, do you know, leave home all day,For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.The best is when they pass and look aside;But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all.Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time,And that long festal year at Fontainebleau! 150I surely then could sometimes leave the ground,Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear,In that humane great monarch's golden look—One finger in his beard or twisted curlOver his mouth's good mark that made the smile,One arm about my shoulder, round my neck,The jingle of his gold chain in my ear,I painting proudly with his breath on me,All his court round him, seeing with his eyes,Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls 160Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts—And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond,This in the background, waiting on my work,To crown the issue with a last reward!A good time, was it not, my kingly days?And had you not grown restless . . . but I know—'T is done and past; 't was right, my instinct said,Too live the life grew, golden and not gray,And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should temptOut of the grange whose four walls make his world. 170How could it end in any other way?You called me, and I came home to your heart.The triumph was—to reach and stay there; sinceI reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold,You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine!"Rafael did this, Andrea painted that;The Roman's is the better when you pray,But still the other's Virgin was his wife—"Men will excuse me, I am glad to judge 180Both pictures in your presence; clearer growsMy better fortune, I resolve to think.For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,Said one day Agnolo, his very self,To Rafael's . . . I have known it all these years . . .(When the young man was flaming out his thoughtsUpon a palace-wall for Rome to see,Too lifted up in heart because of it)"Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrubGoes up and down our Florence, none cares how, 190Who, were he set to plan and executeAs you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!"To Rafael's!—And indeed the arm is wrong.I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see,Give the chalk here—quick, thus the line should go!Ay, but the soul! he's Rafael! rub it out!Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth,(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo?Do you forget already words like those?) 200If really there was such a chance, so lost—Is, whether you're—not grateful—but more pleased.Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed!This hour has been an hour! Another smile?If you would sit thus by me every nightI should work better, do you comprehend?I mean that I should earn more, give you more.See, it is settled dusk now; there's a star;Morello's gone, the watch-lights show the wall,The cue-owls speak the name we call them by. 210Come from the window, love—come in, at last,Inside the melancholy little houseWe built to be so gay with. God is just.King Francis may forgive me: oft at nightsWhen I look up from painting, eyes tired out,The walls become illumined, brick from brickDistinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold,That gold of his I did cement them with!Let us but love each other. Must you go?That Cousin here again? he waits outside? 220Must see you—you, and not with me? Those loans?More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that?Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend?While hand and eye and something of a heartAre left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth?I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sitThe gray remainder of the evening out,Idle, you call it, and muse perfectlyHow I could paint, were I but back in France,One picture, just one more—the Virgin's face, 230Not yours this time! I want you at my sideTo hear them—that is, Michel Agnolo—Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend.I take the subjects for his corridor,Finish the portrait out of hand—there, there,And throw him in another thing or twoIf he demurs; the whole should prove enoughTo pay for this same Cousin's freak. Beside,What's better and what's all I care about, 240Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff!Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he,The Cousin! what does he to please you more?I am grown peaceful as old age to-night.I regret little, I would change still less.Since there my past life lies, why alter it?The very wrong to Francis!—it is trueI took his coin, was tempted and complied,And built this house and sinned, and all is said.My father and my mother died of want. 250Well, had I riches of my own? you seeHow one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot.They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died:And I have labored somewhat in my timeAnd not been paid profusely. Some good sonPaint my two hundred pictures—let him try!No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes,You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night.This must suffice me here. What would one have?In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance— 260Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,Meted on each side by the angel's reed,For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and meTo cover—the three first without a wife,While I have mine! So—still they overcomeBecause there's still Lucrezia—as I choose.Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.NOTES"Andrea del Sarto." This monologue reveals, beside the personalitiesof both Andrea and Lucretia and the main incidents of their lives,the relations existing between Andrea's character, his choice of awife, and the peculiar quality of his art; the whole serving, also,to illustrate the picture on which the poem is based. The gray tonethat silvers the picture pervades the poem with an air of helpless,resigned melancholy, and sets forth the fatal quality of facilecraftsmanship joined with a flaccid spirit. —Mr. John Kenyon,Mrs. Browning's cousin, asked Browning to get him a copy of thepicture of Andrea and his wife in the Pitti Palace. Browning, beingunable to find one, wrote this poem describing it, instead. Andrea(1486-1531), because his father was a tailor, was called del Sarto,also, il pittore senza errori, "the faultless painter."2. Lucrezia: di Baccio del Fede, a cap-maker's widow, says Vasari,who ensnared Andrea "before her husband's death, and who delightedin trapping the hearts of men."15. Fiesole: a hillside city on the Arno, three miles west ofFlorence.93. Morello: the highest of the Apennine mountains north ofFlorence.105. The Urbinate: Raphael Santi (1483-1520), so called because bornat Urbino.106. Vasari: painter and writer of the "Lives of the Most ExcellentItalian Painters," which supplied Browning with material for thispoem and for "Fra Lippo."130. Agnolo: Michel Agnolo Buonarotti, painter, sculptor, and1architect (1475-564).149. Francis: Francis I of France (1494-1547), who invited Andrea tohis Court at Fontainebleau, where he was loaded with gifts andhonors, until, says Vasari, "came to him certain letters fromFlorence written to him by his wife . . . with bitter complaints,"when, taking "the money which the king confided to him for thepurchase of pictures and statues, . . . he set off . . . havingsworn on the Gospels to return in a few months. Arrived inFlorence, he lived joyously with his wife for some time, makingpresents to her father and sisters, but doing nothing for his ownparents, who died in poverty and misery. When the period specifiedby the king had come . . . he found himself at the end not only ofhis own money but . . . of that of the king."184. Agnolo . . . to Rafael: Angelo's remark is given thus byBocchi, "Bellezze di Firenze"; "There is a bit of a manikin inFlorence who, if he chanced to be employed in great undertakings asyou have happened to be, would compel you to look well about you."210. Cue-owls: the owl's cry gives it its common name in variouslanguages and countries; the peculiarity of its cry as to thepredominant sound of oo or ow naming the species. This Italian[a`]ulo] is probably the [Bubo], of the same family as our cat-owl.Buffon gives its note, [he-hoo], [boo-hoo]; hence the Latin name,[Bubo].241. Scudi: Italian coins.261. The New Jerusalem: Revelation 21.15-17.263. Leonard: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), painter, sculptor,architect, and engineer, who, together with Rafael and Agnolo,incarnates the genius of the Renaissance. He visited the same Courtto which Andrea was invited, and was said to have died in the armsof Francis I.
Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?Nephews—sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well—She, men would have to be your mother once,Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!What's done is done, and she is dead beside,Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,And as she died so must we die ourselves,And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream.Life, how and what is it? As here I lie 10In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask"Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all.Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace;And so, about this tomb of mine. I foughtWith tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:—Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner SouthHe graced his carrion with. God curse the same!Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side,And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,And up into the aery dome where liveThe angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk;And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest,With those nine columns round me, two and two,The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripeAs fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 30—Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,Put me where I may look at him! True peach,Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!Draw close: that conflagration of my church—What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!My sons, ye would not be my death? Go digThe white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,Drop water gently till the surface sink,And if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I! . . .Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, 40And corded up in a tight olive-frail,Some lump, ah God, of [lapis lazuli],Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast . . .Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,That brave Frascati villa with its bath,So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,Like God the Father's globe on both his handsYe worship in the Jesu Church so gay,For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! 50Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years:Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black—'T was ever antique-black I meant! How elseShall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchanceSome tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan 60Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,And Moses with the tables . . . but I knowYe mark me not! What do they whisper thee,Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hopeTo revel down my villas while I gaspBricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertineWhich Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then!'T is jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve.My bath must needs be left behind, alas! 70One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world—And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to prayHorses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?—That's if ye carve my epitaph aright,Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word,No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line—Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need!And then how I shall lie through centuries, 80And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,And see God made and eaten all day long,And feel the steady candle-flame, and tasteGood strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,Dying in state and by such slow degrees,I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, dropInto great laps and folds of sculptor's-work: 90And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughtsGrow, with a certain humming in my ears,About the life before I lived this life,And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,—Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! 100Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the PopeMy villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,They glitter like your mother's for my soul,Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,Piece out its starved design, and fill my vaseWith grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,And to the tripod ye would tie a lynxThat in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, 110To comfort me on my entablatureWhereon I am to lie till I must ask"Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there!For ye have stabbed me with ingratitudeTo death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone—Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweatAs if the corpse they keep were oozing through—And no more lapis to delight the world!Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,But in a row: and, going, turn your backs 120—Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,And leave me in my church, the church for peace,That I may watch at leisure if he leers—Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,As still he envied me, so fair she was!NOTES"The Bishop orders his Tomb" This half-delirious pleading of thedying prelate for a tomb which shall gratify his luxurious artistictastes and personal rivalries, presents dramatically not merely thespecial scene of the worldly old bishop's petulant struggle againsthis failing power, and his collapse, finally, beneath the will ofhis so-called nephews, it also illustrates a characteristic grossform of the Renaissance spirit encumbered with Pagan survivals,fleshly appetites, and selfish monopolizings which hampered itsdevelopment.— "It is nearly all that I said of the CentralRenaissance—its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy,ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin—inthirty pages of the 'Stones of Venice,' put into as many lines,Browning's being also the antecedent work" (Ruskin). The Church ofSt.Praxed is notable for the beauty of its stone-work and mosaics,one of its chapels being so extraordinarily rich that it was called[Orto del Paradiso], or the Garden of Paradise; and so, although thebishop and his tomb there are imaginary, it supplies an appropriatesetting for the poetic scene.1. Vanity, saith the preacher: Ecclesiastes 1.2.21. Epistle-side: the right-hand side facing the altar, where theepistle is read by the priest acting as celebrant, the gospel beingread from the other side by the priest acting as assistant.25. Basalt: trap-rock, leaden or black in color.31. Onion stone: for the Italian [cipollino], a kind ofgreenish-white marble splitting into coats like an onion, [cipolla];hence so called.41. Olive-frail: a basket made of rushes, used for packing olives.42. Lapis lazuli: a bright blue stone.46. Frascati: near Rome, on the Alban hills.48. God the Father's globe: in the group of the Trinity adorning thealtar of Saint Ignatius at the church of Il Gesu in Rome.51. Weaver's shuttle: Job 7.6.54. Antique-black: Nero antico. Browning gives the Englishequivalent for the name of this stone.58. Tripod: the seat with three feet on which the priestess ofApollo sat to prophesy, an emblem of the Delphic oracle.Thyrsus: the ivy-coiled staffer spear stuck in a pine-cone, symbolof Bacchic orgy. These, with the other Pagan tokens and pictures,mingle oddly but significantly with the references to the Saviour,Saint Praxed, and Moses. See also line 92, where Saint Praxed isconfused with the Saviour, in the mind of the dying priest. SaintPraxed, the virgin daughter of a Roman Senator and friend of SaintPaul, in whose honor the Bishop's Church is named, is again broughtforward in lines 73-75 in a queer capacity which pointedlyillustrates the speaker and his time.66. Travertine: see note "Pictor Ignotus," 67.68. jasper: a dark green stone with blood-red spots, susceptible ofhigh polish.77. Tully's: Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-46 B. C.).79. Ulpian: a Roman jurist (170-228 A. D.), belonging to thedegenerate age of Roman literature.99. [Elucescebat]: he was illustrious; formed from [elucesco], aninceptive verb from [eluceo]: in post classic Latin.102. Else I give the Pope my villas: perhaps a threat founded on thecustom of Julius II and other popes, according to Burckhardt, ofenlarging their power "by making themselves heirs of the cardinalsand clergy . . . Hence the splendor of tile tombs of the prelates. . . a part of the plunder being in this way saved from the handsof the Pope."108. A vizor and a Term: a mask, and a bust springing from a squarepillar, representing the Roman god Terminus, who presided overboundaries.