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MICHAEL ANGELO, alone in the woods.
MICHAEL ANGELO. HOW still it is among these ancient oaks! | |
| Surges and undulations of the air | |
| Uplift the leafy boughs, and let them fall | |
| With scarce a sound. Such sylvan quietudes | |
| Become old age. These huge centennial oaks, | 5 |
| That may have heard in infancy the trumpets | |
| Of Barbarossa’s cavalry, deride | |
| Man’s brief existence, that with all his strength | |
| He cannot stretch beyond the hundredth year. | |
| This little acorn, turbaned like the Turk, | 10 |
| Which with my foot I spurn, may be an oak | |
| Hereafter, feeding with its bitter mast | |
| The fierce wild-boar, and tossing in its arms | |
| The cradled nests of birds, when all the men | |
| That now inhabit this vast universe, | 15 |
| They and their children, and their children’s children, | |
| Shall be but dust and mould, and nothing more. | |
| Through openings in the trees I see below me | |
| The valley of Clitumnus, with its farms | |
| And snow-white oxen grazing in the shade | 20 |
| Of the tall poplars on the river’s brink. | |
| O Nature, gentle mother, tender nurse! | |
| I, who have never loved thee as I ought, | |
| But wasted all my years immured in cities, | |
| And breathed the stifling atmosphere of streets, | 25 |
| Now come to thee for refuge. Here is peace. | |
| Yonder I see the little hermitages | |
| Dotting the mountain side with points of light, | |
| And here St. Julian’s convent, like a nest | |
| Of curlews, clinging to some windy cliff. | 30 |
| Beyond the broad, illimitable plain | |
| Down sinks the sun, red as Apollo’s quoit, | |
| That, by the envious Zephyr blown aside, | |
| Struck Hyacinthus dead, and stained the earth | |
| With his young blood, that blossomed into flowers. | 35 |
| And now, instead of these fair deities, | |
| Dread demons haunt the earth; hermits inhabit | |
| The leafy homes of sylvan Hamadryads; | |
| And jovial friars, rotund and rubicund, | |
| Replace the old Silenus with his ass. | 40 |
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| Here underneath these venerable oaks, | |
| Wrinkled and brown and gnarled like them with age, | |
| A brother of the monastery sits, | |
| Lost in his meditations. What may be | |
| The questions that perplex, the hopes that cheer him?— | 45 |
Good-evening, holy father.
MONK. God be with you. | |
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MICHAEL ANGELO. Pardon a stranger if he interrupt | |
Your meditations.
MONK. It was but a dream.— | |
| The old, old dream, that never will come true; | |
| The dream that all my life I have been dreaming, | 50 |
And yet is still a dream.
MICHAEL ANGELO. All men have dreams, | |
| I have had mine; but none of them came true; | |
| They were but vanity. Sometimes I think | |
| The happiness of man lies in pursuing, | |
| Not in possessing; for the things possessed | 55 |
| Lose half their value. Tell me of your dream. | |
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MONK. The yearning of my heart, my sole desire, | |
| That like the sheaf of Joseph stands upright, | |
| While all the others bend and bow to it; | |
| The passion that torments me, and that breathes | 60 |
| New meaning into the dead forms of prayer, | |
| Is that with mortal eyes I may behold | |
The Eternal City.
MICHAEL ANGELO. Rome?
MONK. There is but one; | |
| The rest merely names. I think of it | |
| As the Celestial City, paved with gold, | 65 |
And sentinelled with angels.
MICHAEL ANGELO. Would it were. | |
| I have just fled from it. It is beleaguered | |
| By Spanish troops, led by the Duke of Alva. | |
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MONK. But still for me ’t is the Celestial City, | |
| And I would see it once before I die. | 70 |
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MICHAEL ANGELO. Each one must bear his cross.
MONK. Were it a cross | |
| That had been laid upon me, I could bear it, | |
| Or fall with it. It is a crucifix; | |
| I am nailed hand and foot, and I am dying! | |
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MICHAEL ANGELO. What would you see in Rome?
MONK. His Holiness. | 75 |
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MICHAEL ANGELO. Him that was once the Cardinal Caraffa? | |
| You would but see a man of fourscore years, | |
| With sunken eyes, burning like carbuncles, | |
| Who sits at table with his friends for hours, | |
| Cursing the Spaniards as a race of Jews | 80 |
| And miscreant Moors. And with what soldiery | |
| Think you he now defends the Eternal City? | |
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MONK. With legions of bright angels.
MICHAEL ANGELO. So he calls them; | |
| And yet in fact these bright angelic legions | |
Are only German Lutherans.
MONK, crossing himself. Heaven protect us! | 85 |
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MICHAEL ANGELO. What further would you see?
MONK. The Cardinals, | |
| Going in their gilt coaches to High Mass. | |
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MICHAEL ANGELO. Men do not go to Paradise in coaches. | |
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MONK. The catacombs, the convents, and the churches; | |
| The ceremonies of the Holy Week | 90 |
| In all their pomp, or, at the Epiphany, | |
| The feast of the Santissimo Bambino | |
| At Ara Cœli. But I shall not see them. | |
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MICHAEL ANGELO. These pompous ceremonies of the Church | |
| Are but an empty show to him who knows | 95 |
| The actors in them. Stay here in your convent, | |
| For he who goes to Rome may see too much. | |
What would you further?
MONK. I would see the painting | |
| Of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. | |
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MICHAEL ANGELO. The smoke of incense and of altar candles | 100 |
Has blackened it already.
MONK. Woe is me! | |
| Then I would hear Allegri’s Miserere, | |
Sung by the Papal choir.
MICHAEL ANGELO. A dismal dirge! | |
| I am an old, old man, and I have lived | |
| In Rome for thirty years and more, and know | 105 |
| The jarring of the wheels of that great world, | |
| Its jealousies, its discords, and its strife. | |
| Therefore I say to you, remain content | |
| Here in your convent, here among your woods, | |
| Where only there is peace. Go not to Rome. | 110 |
| There was of old a monk of Wittenberg | |
| Who went to Rome; you may have heard of him; | |
| His name was Luther; and you know what followed. [The convent bell rings. | |
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MONK, rising. It is the convent bell; it rings for vespers. | |
| Let us go in; we both will pray for peace. | 115 |
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