I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!You need not clap your torches to my face.Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk!What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,And here you catch me at an alley's end5Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up,Do—harry out, if you must show your zeal,Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,And nip each softling of a wee white mouse,10Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company!Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll takeYour hand away that's fiddling on my throat,And please to know me likewise. Who am I?Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend15Three streets off—he's a certain ... how d'ye call?Master—a ... Cosimo of the Medici,I' the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best!Remember and tell me, the day you're hanged,How you affected such a gullet's-gripe!20But you, sir, it concerns you that your knavesPick up a manner nor discredit you:Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streetsAnd count fair prize what comes into their net?He's Judas to a tittle, that man is!25Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends.Lord, I'm not angry! Bid your hangdogs goDrink out this quarter-florin to the healthOf the munificent House that harbors me(And many more beside, lads! more beside!)30And all's come square again. I'd like his face—His, elbowing on his comrade in the doorWith the pike and lantern—for the slave that holdsJohn Baptist's head a-dangle by the hairWith one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say)35And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped!It's not your chance to have a bit of chalk,A wood-coal, or the like? or you should see!Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so.What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down,40You know them and they take you? like enough!I saw the proper twinkle in your eye—'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first.Let's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.Here's spring come, and the nights one makes up bands45To roam the town and sing out carnival,And I've been three weeks shut within my mew,A-painting for the great man, saints and saintsAnd saints again. I could not paint all night—Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air.50There came a hurry of feet and little feet,A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song—Flower o' the broom,Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!Flower o' the quince,55I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?Flower o' the thyme—and so on. Round they went.Scarce had they turned the corner when a titterLike the skipping of rabbits by moonlight—three slim shapes,And a face that looked up ... zooks, sir, flesh and blood,60That's all I'm made of! Into shreds it went,Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,All the bed-furniture—a dozen knots,There was a ladder! Down I let myself,Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,65And after them. I came up with the funHard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met—Flower o' the rose,If I've been merry, what matter who knows?And so I was stealing back again70To get to bed and have a bit of sleepEre I rise up tomorrow and go workOn Jerome knocking at his poor old breastWith his great round stone to subdue the flesh,You snap me of the sudden. Ah, I see!75Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your head—Mine's shaved—a monk, you say—the sting's in that!If Master Cosimo announced himself,Mum's the word naturally; but a monk!Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now!80I was a baby when my mother diedAnd father died and left me in the street.I starved there, God knows how, a year or twoOn fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day,85My stomach being empty as your hat,The wind doubled me up and down I went.Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew),And so along the wall, over the bridge,90By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there,While I stood munching my first bread that month:"So, boy, you've minded," quoth the good fat father,Wiping his own mouth—'twas refection-time—"To quit this very miserable world?95Will you renounce" ... "the mouthful of bread?" thought I;By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me;I did renounce the world, its pride and greed,Palace, farm, villa, shop, and banking-house,Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici100Have given their hearts to—all at eight years old.Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,'Twas not for nothing—the good bellyful,The warm serge and the rope that goes all round,And day-long blessed idleness beside!105"Let's see what the urchin's fit for"—that came next.Not overmuch their way, I must confess.Such a to-do! They tried me with their books;Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste!Flower o' the clove,110All the Latin I construe is "amo," I love!But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streetsEight years together, as my fortune was,Watching folk's faces to know who will flingThe bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,115And who will curse or kick him for his pains—Which gentleman processional and fine,Holding a candle to the Sacrament,Will wink and let him lift a plate and catchThe droppings of the wax to sell again,120Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped—How say I?—nay, which dog bites, which lets dropHis bone from the heap of offal in the street—Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,He learns the look of things, and none the less125For admonition from the hunger-pinch.I had a store of such remarks, be sure,Which, after I found leisure, turned to use.I drew men's faces on my copy books,Scrawled them within the antiphonary's marge,130Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's,And made a string of pictures of the worldBetwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun,On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black.135"Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d'ye say?In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark.What if at last we get our man of parts,We Carmelites, like those CamaldoleseAnd Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine140And put the front on it that ought to be!"And hereupon he bade me daub away.Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank,Never was such prompt disemburdening.First, every sort of monk, the black and white,145I drew them, fat and lean: then, folk at church,From good old gossips waiting to confessTheir cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends—To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there150With the little children round him in a rowOf admiration, half for his beard and halfFor that white anger of his victim's sonShaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,Signing himself with the other because of Christ155(Whose sad face on the cross sees only thisAfter the passion of a thousand years)Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head,(Which the intense eyes looked through) came at eveOn tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf,160Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers(The brute took growling), prayed, and so was gone.I painted all, then cried, "'Tis ask and have;Choose, for more's ready!"—laid the ladder flat,And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall.165The monks closed in a circle and praised loudTill checked, taught what to see and not to see,Being simple bodies—"That's the very man!Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog!That woman's like the Prior's niece who comes170To care about his asthma: it's the life!"But there my triumph's straw-fire flared and funked;Their betters took their turn to see and say:The Prior and the learned pulled a faceAnd stopped all that in no time. "How? what's here?175Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all!Faces, arms, legs, and bodies like the trueAs much as pea and pea! It's devil's-game!Your business is not to catch men with show,With homage to the perishable clay,180But lift them over it, ignore it all,Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh.Your business is to paint the souls of men—-Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke ... no, it's not ...It's vapor done up like a new-born babe—185(In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth)It's ... well, what matters talking, it's the soul!Give us no more of body than shows soul!Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God,That sets us praising—why not stop with him?190Why put all thoughts of praise out of our headWith wonder at lines, colors, and what not?Paint the soul; never mind the legs and arms!Rub all out; try at it a second time.Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts,195She's just my niece ... Herodias, I would say—Who went and danced and got men's heads cut off!Have it all out!" Now, is this sense, I ask?A fine way to paint soul, by painting bodySo ill the eye can't stop there, must go further,200And can't fare worse! Thus, yellow does for whiteWhen what you put for yellow's simply black,And any sort of meaning looks intenseWhen all beside itself means and looks naught.Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn,205Left foot and right foot, go a double step,Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,Both in their order? Take the prettiest face,The Prior's niece ... patron-saint—is it so prettyYou can't discover if it means hope, fear,210Sorrow, or joy? Won't beauty go with these?Suppose I've made her eyes all right and blue,Can't I take breath and try to add life's flash,And then add soul and heighten them three-fold?Or say there's beauty with no soul at all—215(I never saw it—put the case the same—)If you get simple beauty and naught else,You get about the best thing God invents:That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed,Within yourself, when you return Him thanks.220"Rub all out!" Well, well, there's my life, in short,And so the thing has gone on ever since.I'm grown a man no doubt; I've broken bounds:You should not take a fellow eight years oldAnd make him swear to never kiss the girls.225I'm my own master, paint now as I please—Having a friend, you see, in the Corner-house!Lord, it's fast holding by the rings in front—Those great rings serve more purposes than justTo plant a flag in, or tie up a horse!230And yet the old schooling sticks, the old grave eyesAre peeping o'er my shoulder as I work,The heads shake still—"It's art's decline, my son!You're not of the true painters, great and old;Brother Angelico's the man, you'll find;235Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer:Fag on at flesh, you'll never make the third!"Flower o' the pine,You keep your mist ... manners, and I'll stick to mine!I'm not the third, then: bless us, they must know!240Don't you think they're the likeliest to know,They with their Latin? So, I swallow my rage,Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paintTo please them—sometimes do and sometimes don't;For, doing most, there's pretty sure to come245A turn, some warm eve finds me at my saints—A laugh, a cry, the business of the world—(Flower o' the peach,Death for us all, and his own life for each!)And my whole soul revolves, the cup runs over,250The world and life's too big to pass for a dream,And I do these wild things in sheer despite,And play the fooleries you catch me at,In pure rage! The old mill-horse, out at grassAfter hard years, throws up his stiff heels so,255Although the miller does not preach to himThe only good of grass is to make chaff.What would men have? Do they like grass or no—May they or mayn't they? All I want's the thingSettled forever one way. As it is,260You tell too many lies and hurt yourself:You don't like what you only like too much,You do like what, if given you at your word,You find abundantly detestable.For me, I think I speak as I was taught;265I always see the garden and God thereA-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned,The value and significance of flesh,I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards.You understand me: I'm a beast, I know.270But see, now—why, I see as certainlyAs that the morning-star's about to shine,What will hap some day. We've a youngster hereComes to our convent, studies what I do,Slouches and stares and lets no atom drop:275His name is Guidi—he'll not mind the monks—They call him Hulking Tom, he lets them talk—He picks my practice up—he'll paint apace.I hope so—though I never live so long,I know what's sure to follow. You be judge!280You speak no Latin more than I, belike;However, you're my man, you've seen the world—The beauty and the wonder and the power,The shapes of things, their colors, lights, and shadesChanges, surprises—and God made it all!285—For what? Do you feel thankful, aye or no,For this fair town's face, yonder river's line,The mountain round it and the sky above,Much more the figures of man, woman, child,These are the frame to? What's it all about?290To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon,Wondered at? oh, this last of course!—you say.But why not do as well as say—paint theseJust as they are, careless what comes of it?God's works—paint any one, and count it crime295To let a truth slip. Don't object, "His worksAre here already; nature is complete:Suppose you reproduce her—(which you can't)There's no advantage! you must beat her, then."For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love300First when we see them painted, things we have passedPerhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;And so they are better, painted—better to us,Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;God uses us to help each other so,305Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now,Your cullion's hanging face? A bit of chalk,And trust me but you should, though! How much more,If I drew higher things with the same truth!That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place,310Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh,It makes me mad to see what men shall doAnd we in our graves! This world's no blot for us,Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:To find its meaning is my meat and drink.315"Aye, but you don't so instigate to prayer!"Strikes in the Prior: "when your meaning's plainIt does not say to folk—remember matins,Or, mind you fast next Friday!" Why, for thisWhat need of art at all? A skull and bones,320Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or, what's best,A bell to chime the hour with, does as well.I painted a Saint Laurence six months sinceAt Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style:"How looks my painting, now the scaffold's down?"325I ask a brother: "Hugely," he returns—"Already not one phiz of your three slavesWho turn the Deacon off his toasted side,But's scratched and prodded to our heart's content,The pious people have so eased their own330With coming to say prayers there in a rage:We get on fast to see the bricks beneath.Expect another job this time next year,For pity and religion grow i' the crowd—Your painting serves its purpose!" Hang the fools!335—That is—you'll not mistake an idle wordSpoke in a huff by a poor monk, God wot,Tasting the air this spicy night which turnsThe unaccustomed head like Chianti wine!Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now!340It's natural a poor monk out of boundsShould have his apt word to excuse himself:And hearken how I plot to make amends.I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece... There's for you! Give me six months, then go, see345Something in Sant' Ambrogio's! Bless the nuns!They want a cast o' my office. I shall paintGod in the midst, Madonna and her babe,Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood,Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet350As puff on puff of grated orris-rootWhen ladies crowd to Church at midsummer.And then i' the front, of course a saint or two—Saint John, because he saves the Florentines,Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and white355The convent's friends and gives them a long day,And Job, I must have him there past mistake,The man of Uz (and Us without the z,Painters who need his patience). Well, all theseSecured at their devotion, up shall come360Out of a corner when you least expect,As one by a dark stair into a great light,Music and talking, who but Lippo! I!—Mazed, motionless, and moonstruck—I'm the man!Back I shrink—what is this I see and hear?365I, caught up with my monk's-things by mistake,My old serge gown and rope that goes all round,I, in this presence, this pure company!Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape?Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing370Forward, puts out a soft palm—"Not so fast!"—Addresses the celestial presence, "nay—He made you and devised you, after all,Though he's none of you! Could Saint John there draw—His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?375We come to brother Lippo for all that,Iste perfecit opus!" So, all smile—I shuffle sideways with my blushing faceUnder the cover of a hundred wingsThrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay380And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,Till, wholly unexpected, in there popsThe hothead husband! Thus I scuttle offTo some safe bench behind, not letting goThe palm of her, the little lily thing385That spoke the good word for me in the nick,Like the Prior's niece ... Saint Lucy, I would say.And so all's saved for me, and for the churchA pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence!Your hand, sir, and good-by: no lights, no lights!390The street's hushed, and I know my own way back,Don't fear me! There's the gray beginning. Zooks!
I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!You need not clap your torches to my face.Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk!What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,And here you catch me at an alley's end5Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up,Do—harry out, if you must show your zeal,Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,And nip each softling of a wee white mouse,10Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company!Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll takeYour hand away that's fiddling on my throat,And please to know me likewise. Who am I?Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend15Three streets off—he's a certain ... how d'ye call?Master—a ... Cosimo of the Medici,I' the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best!Remember and tell me, the day you're hanged,How you affected such a gullet's-gripe!20But you, sir, it concerns you that your knavesPick up a manner nor discredit you:Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streetsAnd count fair prize what comes into their net?He's Judas to a tittle, that man is!25Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends.Lord, I'm not angry! Bid your hangdogs goDrink out this quarter-florin to the healthOf the munificent House that harbors me(And many more beside, lads! more beside!)30And all's come square again. I'd like his face—His, elbowing on his comrade in the doorWith the pike and lantern—for the slave that holdsJohn Baptist's head a-dangle by the hairWith one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say)35And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped!It's not your chance to have a bit of chalk,A wood-coal, or the like? or you should see!Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so.What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down,40You know them and they take you? like enough!I saw the proper twinkle in your eye—'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first.Let's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.Here's spring come, and the nights one makes up bands45To roam the town and sing out carnival,And I've been three weeks shut within my mew,A-painting for the great man, saints and saintsAnd saints again. I could not paint all night—Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air.50There came a hurry of feet and little feet,A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song—Flower o' the broom,Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!Flower o' the quince,55I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?Flower o' the thyme—and so on. Round they went.Scarce had they turned the corner when a titterLike the skipping of rabbits by moonlight—three slim shapes,And a face that looked up ... zooks, sir, flesh and blood,60That's all I'm made of! Into shreds it went,Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,All the bed-furniture—a dozen knots,There was a ladder! Down I let myself,Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,65And after them. I came up with the funHard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met—Flower o' the rose,If I've been merry, what matter who knows?And so I was stealing back again70To get to bed and have a bit of sleepEre I rise up tomorrow and go workOn Jerome knocking at his poor old breastWith his great round stone to subdue the flesh,You snap me of the sudden. Ah, I see!75Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your head—Mine's shaved—a monk, you say—the sting's in that!If Master Cosimo announced himself,Mum's the word naturally; but a monk!Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now!80I was a baby when my mother diedAnd father died and left me in the street.I starved there, God knows how, a year or twoOn fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day,85My stomach being empty as your hat,The wind doubled me up and down I went.Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew),And so along the wall, over the bridge,90By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there,While I stood munching my first bread that month:"So, boy, you've minded," quoth the good fat father,Wiping his own mouth—'twas refection-time—"To quit this very miserable world?95Will you renounce" ... "the mouthful of bread?" thought I;By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me;I did renounce the world, its pride and greed,Palace, farm, villa, shop, and banking-house,Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici100Have given their hearts to—all at eight years old.Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,'Twas not for nothing—the good bellyful,The warm serge and the rope that goes all round,And day-long blessed idleness beside!105"Let's see what the urchin's fit for"—that came next.Not overmuch their way, I must confess.Such a to-do! They tried me with their books;Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste!Flower o' the clove,110All the Latin I construe is "amo," I love!But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streetsEight years together, as my fortune was,Watching folk's faces to know who will flingThe bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,115And who will curse or kick him for his pains—Which gentleman processional and fine,Holding a candle to the Sacrament,Will wink and let him lift a plate and catchThe droppings of the wax to sell again,120Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped—How say I?—nay, which dog bites, which lets dropHis bone from the heap of offal in the street—Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,He learns the look of things, and none the less125For admonition from the hunger-pinch.I had a store of such remarks, be sure,Which, after I found leisure, turned to use.I drew men's faces on my copy books,Scrawled them within the antiphonary's marge,130Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's,And made a string of pictures of the worldBetwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun,On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black.135"Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d'ye say?In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark.What if at last we get our man of parts,We Carmelites, like those CamaldoleseAnd Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine140And put the front on it that ought to be!"And hereupon he bade me daub away.Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank,Never was such prompt disemburdening.First, every sort of monk, the black and white,145I drew them, fat and lean: then, folk at church,From good old gossips waiting to confessTheir cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends—To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there150With the little children round him in a rowOf admiration, half for his beard and halfFor that white anger of his victim's sonShaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,Signing himself with the other because of Christ155(Whose sad face on the cross sees only thisAfter the passion of a thousand years)Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head,(Which the intense eyes looked through) came at eveOn tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf,160Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers(The brute took growling), prayed, and so was gone.I painted all, then cried, "'Tis ask and have;Choose, for more's ready!"—laid the ladder flat,And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall.165The monks closed in a circle and praised loudTill checked, taught what to see and not to see,Being simple bodies—"That's the very man!Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog!That woman's like the Prior's niece who comes170To care about his asthma: it's the life!"But there my triumph's straw-fire flared and funked;Their betters took their turn to see and say:The Prior and the learned pulled a faceAnd stopped all that in no time. "How? what's here?175Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all!Faces, arms, legs, and bodies like the trueAs much as pea and pea! It's devil's-game!Your business is not to catch men with show,With homage to the perishable clay,180But lift them over it, ignore it all,Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh.Your business is to paint the souls of men—-Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke ... no, it's not ...It's vapor done up like a new-born babe—185(In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth)It's ... well, what matters talking, it's the soul!Give us no more of body than shows soul!Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God,That sets us praising—why not stop with him?190Why put all thoughts of praise out of our headWith wonder at lines, colors, and what not?Paint the soul; never mind the legs and arms!Rub all out; try at it a second time.Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts,195She's just my niece ... Herodias, I would say—Who went and danced and got men's heads cut off!Have it all out!" Now, is this sense, I ask?A fine way to paint soul, by painting bodySo ill the eye can't stop there, must go further,200And can't fare worse! Thus, yellow does for whiteWhen what you put for yellow's simply black,And any sort of meaning looks intenseWhen all beside itself means and looks naught.Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn,205Left foot and right foot, go a double step,Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,Both in their order? Take the prettiest face,The Prior's niece ... patron-saint—is it so prettyYou can't discover if it means hope, fear,210Sorrow, or joy? Won't beauty go with these?Suppose I've made her eyes all right and blue,Can't I take breath and try to add life's flash,And then add soul and heighten them three-fold?Or say there's beauty with no soul at all—215(I never saw it—put the case the same—)If you get simple beauty and naught else,You get about the best thing God invents:That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed,Within yourself, when you return Him thanks.220"Rub all out!" Well, well, there's my life, in short,And so the thing has gone on ever since.I'm grown a man no doubt; I've broken bounds:You should not take a fellow eight years oldAnd make him swear to never kiss the girls.225I'm my own master, paint now as I please—Having a friend, you see, in the Corner-house!Lord, it's fast holding by the rings in front—Those great rings serve more purposes than justTo plant a flag in, or tie up a horse!230And yet the old schooling sticks, the old grave eyesAre peeping o'er my shoulder as I work,The heads shake still—"It's art's decline, my son!You're not of the true painters, great and old;Brother Angelico's the man, you'll find;235Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer:Fag on at flesh, you'll never make the third!"Flower o' the pine,You keep your mist ... manners, and I'll stick to mine!I'm not the third, then: bless us, they must know!240Don't you think they're the likeliest to know,They with their Latin? So, I swallow my rage,Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paintTo please them—sometimes do and sometimes don't;For, doing most, there's pretty sure to come245A turn, some warm eve finds me at my saints—A laugh, a cry, the business of the world—(Flower o' the peach,Death for us all, and his own life for each!)And my whole soul revolves, the cup runs over,250The world and life's too big to pass for a dream,And I do these wild things in sheer despite,And play the fooleries you catch me at,In pure rage! The old mill-horse, out at grassAfter hard years, throws up his stiff heels so,255Although the miller does not preach to himThe only good of grass is to make chaff.What would men have? Do they like grass or no—May they or mayn't they? All I want's the thingSettled forever one way. As it is,260You tell too many lies and hurt yourself:You don't like what you only like too much,You do like what, if given you at your word,You find abundantly detestable.For me, I think I speak as I was taught;265I always see the garden and God thereA-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned,The value and significance of flesh,I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards.
You understand me: I'm a beast, I know.270But see, now—why, I see as certainlyAs that the morning-star's about to shine,What will hap some day. We've a youngster hereComes to our convent, studies what I do,Slouches and stares and lets no atom drop:275His name is Guidi—he'll not mind the monks—They call him Hulking Tom, he lets them talk—He picks my practice up—he'll paint apace.I hope so—though I never live so long,I know what's sure to follow. You be judge!280You speak no Latin more than I, belike;However, you're my man, you've seen the world—The beauty and the wonder and the power,The shapes of things, their colors, lights, and shadesChanges, surprises—and God made it all!285—For what? Do you feel thankful, aye or no,For this fair town's face, yonder river's line,The mountain round it and the sky above,Much more the figures of man, woman, child,These are the frame to? What's it all about?290To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon,Wondered at? oh, this last of course!—you say.But why not do as well as say—paint theseJust as they are, careless what comes of it?God's works—paint any one, and count it crime295To let a truth slip. Don't object, "His worksAre here already; nature is complete:Suppose you reproduce her—(which you can't)There's no advantage! you must beat her, then."For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love300First when we see them painted, things we have passedPerhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;And so they are better, painted—better to us,Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;God uses us to help each other so,305Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now,Your cullion's hanging face? A bit of chalk,And trust me but you should, though! How much more,If I drew higher things with the same truth!That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place,310Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh,It makes me mad to see what men shall doAnd we in our graves! This world's no blot for us,Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:To find its meaning is my meat and drink.315"Aye, but you don't so instigate to prayer!"Strikes in the Prior: "when your meaning's plainIt does not say to folk—remember matins,Or, mind you fast next Friday!" Why, for thisWhat need of art at all? A skull and bones,320Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or, what's best,A bell to chime the hour with, does as well.I painted a Saint Laurence six months sinceAt Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style:"How looks my painting, now the scaffold's down?"325I ask a brother: "Hugely," he returns—"Already not one phiz of your three slavesWho turn the Deacon off his toasted side,But's scratched and prodded to our heart's content,The pious people have so eased their own330With coming to say prayers there in a rage:We get on fast to see the bricks beneath.Expect another job this time next year,For pity and religion grow i' the crowd—Your painting serves its purpose!" Hang the fools!335
—That is—you'll not mistake an idle wordSpoke in a huff by a poor monk, God wot,Tasting the air this spicy night which turnsThe unaccustomed head like Chianti wine!Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now!340It's natural a poor monk out of boundsShould have his apt word to excuse himself:And hearken how I plot to make amends.I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece... There's for you! Give me six months, then go, see345Something in Sant' Ambrogio's! Bless the nuns!They want a cast o' my office. I shall paintGod in the midst, Madonna and her babe,Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood,Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet350As puff on puff of grated orris-rootWhen ladies crowd to Church at midsummer.And then i' the front, of course a saint or two—Saint John, because he saves the Florentines,Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and white355The convent's friends and gives them a long day,And Job, I must have him there past mistake,The man of Uz (and Us without the z,Painters who need his patience). Well, all theseSecured at their devotion, up shall come360Out of a corner when you least expect,As one by a dark stair into a great light,Music and talking, who but Lippo! I!—Mazed, motionless, and moonstruck—I'm the man!Back I shrink—what is this I see and hear?365I, caught up with my monk's-things by mistake,My old serge gown and rope that goes all round,I, in this presence, this pure company!Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape?Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing370Forward, puts out a soft palm—"Not so fast!"—Addresses the celestial presence, "nay—He made you and devised you, after all,Though he's none of you! Could Saint John there draw—His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?375We come to brother Lippo for all that,Iste perfecit opus!" So, all smile—I shuffle sideways with my blushing faceUnder the cover of a hundred wingsThrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay380And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,Till, wholly unexpected, in there popsThe hothead husband! Thus I scuttle offTo some safe bench behind, not letting goThe palm of her, the little lily thing385That spoke the good word for me in the nick,Like the Prior's niece ... Saint Lucy, I would say.And so all's saved for me, and for the churchA pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence!Your hand, sir, and good-by: no lights, no lights!390The street's hushed, and I know my own way back,Don't fear me! There's the gray beginning. Zooks!
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,5Treat 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 tomorrow, 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,15Both of one mind, as married people use,Quietly, quietly the evening through,I might get up tomorrow to my workCheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.Tomorrow, 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—25My 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—35All 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.45Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shapeAs 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,55But you can hear at least when people speak:And that cartoon, the second from the door—It is the thing, Love! so such thing 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,65And 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—75Yet 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,85Though 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,Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?95Speak 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.105('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:115But 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—125Had 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 overrules.Beside, incentives come from the soul's self;The rest avail not. Why do I need you?135What 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.'Tis 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,145For 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,155One 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 souls160Profuse, 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?165And load you not grown restless ... but I know—'Tis done and past; 'twas 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,175You 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 judge180Both 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 ... I have known it all these years ...185(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,195Give the chalk here—quick, thus the line should go!Aye, 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 night205I 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,215The 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?225I'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? Tomorrow, satisfy your friend.I take the subjects for his corridor,235Finish 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 tonight.I regret little, I would change still less.245Since 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 son255Paint my two hundred pictures—let him try!No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes,You loved me quite enough, it seems tonight.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 overcome265Because there's still Lucrezia—as I choose.Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.
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,5Treat 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 tomorrow, 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,15Both of one mind, as married people use,Quietly, quietly the evening through,I might get up tomorrow to my workCheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.Tomorrow, 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—25My 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—35All 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.45Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shapeAs 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,55But you can hear at least when people speak:And that cartoon, the second from the door—It is the thing, Love! so such thing 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,65And 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—75Yet 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,85Though 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,Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?95Speak 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.105('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:115But 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—125Had 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 overrules.Beside, incentives come from the soul's self;The rest avail not. Why do I need you?135What 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.'Tis 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,145For 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,155One 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 souls160Profuse, 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?165And load you not grown restless ... but I know—'Tis done and past; 'twas 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,175You 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 judge180Both 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 ... I have known it all these years ...185(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,195Give the chalk here—quick, thus the line should go!Aye, 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 night205I 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,215The 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?225I'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? Tomorrow, satisfy your friend.I take the subjects for his corridor,235Finish 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 tonight.I regret little, I would change still less.245Since 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 son255Paint my two hundred pictures—let him try!No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes,You loved me quite enough, it seems tonight.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 overcome265Because there's still Lucrezia—as I choose.
Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.