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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? | |
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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. | |
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Again the Cousin’s whistle! Go, my Love. | |
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