| |
| 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, | 5 |
| Treat his own subject after his own way, | |
| Fix his own time, accept too his own price, | |
| And shut the money into this small hand | |
| When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly? | |
| Oh, I’ll content him,—but to-morrow, Love! | 10 |
| I often am much wearier than you think, | |
| This evening more than usual, and it seems | |
| As if—forgive now—should you let me sit | |
| Here by the window with your hand in mine | |
| And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole, | 15 |
| Both of one mind, as married people use, | |
| Quietly, quietly the evening through, | |
| I might get up to-morrow to my work | |
| Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try. | |
| To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this! | 20 |
| Your 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 serve | |
| For each of the five pictures we require: | |
| It saves a model. So! keep looking so— | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| And, 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,— | 35 |
| 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 down | |
| To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. | 40 |
| There’s the bell clinking from the chapel-top; | |
| That length of convent-wall across the way | |
| Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; | |
| The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease, | |
| And autumn grows, autumn in everything. | 45 |
| Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape | |
| As if I saw alike my work and self | |
| And 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; | 50 |
| So 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 understand | |
| Nor care to understand about my art, | 55 |
| 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, | 60 |
| What I see, what at bottom of my heart | |
| I 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, | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| And fail in doing. I could count twenty such | |
| On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, | |
| Who strive—you don’t know how the others strive | |
| To paint a little thing like that you smeared | |
| Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,— | 75 |
| 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, | 80 |
| Heart, or whate’er else, than goes on to prompt | |
| This 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, | 85 |
| 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, | 90 |
| Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blame | |
| Or their praise either. Somebody remarks | |
| Morello’s outline there is wrongly traced, | |
| His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, | |
| Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? | 95 |
| 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-gray | |
| Placid and perfect with my art: the worse! | |
| I know both what I want and what might gain, | 100 |
| And 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 youth | |
| The 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; | 110 |
| That 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: | 115 |
| 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— | 120 |
| More 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 bird | |
| The fowler’s pipe, and follows to the snare— | 125 |
| 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! | 130 |
| Rafael 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? | 135 |
| 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, | 140 |
| God, 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, | 145 |
| 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! | 150 |
| I 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 curl | |
| Over his mouth’s good mark that made the smile, | 155 |
| 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 | 160 |
| Profuse, 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? | 165 |
| And had 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 tempt | |
| Out of the grange whose four walls make his world. | 170 |
| How 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; since | |
| I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost? | |
| Let my hands frame your face in your hair’s gold, | 175 |
| 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 | 180 |
| Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows | |
| My 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 thoughts | |
| Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see, | |
| Too lifted up in heart because of it) | |
| “Friend, there’s a certain sorry little scrub | |
| Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, | 190 |
| Who, were he set to plan and execute | |
| As 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, | 195 |
| 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?) | 200 |
| If 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 night | 205 |
| I 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. | 210 |
| Come from the window, love,—come in, at last, | |
| Inside the melancholy little house | |
| We built to be so gay with. God is just. | |
| King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights | |
| When I look up from painting, eyes tired out, | 215 |
| The walls become illumined, brick from brick | |
| Distinct, 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? | 220 |
| Must 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 heart | |
| Are left me, work’s my ware, and what’s it worth? | 225 |
| I’ll pay my fancy. Only let me sit | |
| The gray remainder of the evening out, | |
| Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly | |
| How I could paint, were I but back in France, | |
| One picture, just one more—the Virgin’s face. | 230 |
| Not yours this time! I want you at my side | |
| To 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, | 235 |
| Finish the portrait out of hand—there, there, | |
| And throw him in another thing or two | |
| If he demurs; the whole should prove enough | |
| To pay for this same Cousin’s freak. Beside, | |
| What’s better and what’s all I care about, | 240 |
| Get 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. | 245 |
| Since there my past life lies, why alter it? | |
| The very wrong to Francis!—it is true | |
| I 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. | 250 |
| Well, had I riches of my own? you see | |
| How 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 time | |
| And not been paid profusely. Some good son | 255 |
| Paint 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— | 260 |
| Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, | |
| Meted on each side by the angel’s reed, | |
| For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me | |
| To cover—the three first without a wife, | |
| While I have mine! So—still they overcome | 265 |
| Because there’s still Lucrezia,—as I choose. | |
| |
| Again the Cousin’s whistle! Go, my Love. | |
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