Dante once prepared to paint an angel: Whom to please? You whisper "Beatrice." 6 While he mused and traced it and retraced it, (Peradventure with a pen corroded

Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,
When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked,"
Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,
Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment,
Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
Let the wretch go festering through Flor-
ence)

Dante, who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
Dante standing, studying his angel,
In there broke the folk of his Inferno.

1 the Sistine Madonna, now in Dresden 2 the Madonna di Foligno, now in the Vatican at Rome 3 the Madonna del Granduca, representing her as appearing to a votary in a vision In the Louvre at Paris, the Madonna called La Belle Jardinière is seated in a garden. 5a Florentine painter (1575-1642) 6 Beatrice Portinari, Dante's ideal love7cf. Inferno, xxxii, 97

AE

XIII

Yet a semblance of resource avails us
Shade so finely touched, love's sense must
seize it.

Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,
Lines I write the first time and the last time.
He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush,
Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,
Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little, 123
Makes a strange art of an art familiar,
Fills his lady's missal-marge 1 with flowerets.
He who blows through bronze, may breathe
through silver,

Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.
He who writes, may write for once as I do.

XIV

130

Love, you saw me gather men and women,
Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,
Enter each and all, and use their service,
Speak from every mouth, the speech, a
poem.
Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:
I am mine and yours the rest be all men's,
Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty.
Let me speak this once in my true person,
Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea,
Though the fruit of speech be just this sen-

Hard to greet, she traverses the house-roofs, Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.

XVI

What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
Nay for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos 1), 160
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steers-

man

Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,

Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats-him, even! Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal

When she turns round, comes again in heaven, Opens out anew for worse or better !

Proves she like some portent of an iceberg Swimming full upon the ship it founders, 170 Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals? Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire Seen by Moses 2 when he climbed the mountain?

Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu

Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,
Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.
Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved
work,

When they ate and drank and saw God also!

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,

Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,

Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed

Armies of angels that soar, legions of demon that lurk,

Man, brute, reptile, fly, alien of end and of aim,

Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,

Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,

And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

8

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,

This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise !

Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,

Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!

And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,

All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,

All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,

Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:

Had I written the same, made verse - still, effect proceeds from cause,

Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;

It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,

Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:

48

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,

Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!

And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,

That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:

It is everywhere in the world - loud, soft, and all is said:

Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:

And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!

56 Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I

reared;

Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;

For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,

That he even gave it a thought, the gone

thing was to go.

Never to be again! But many more of the

kind

As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?

To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind

1 by means of

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be,

96

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty,

nor good, nor power

Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist

When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,

The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;

Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.

Our times are in his hand

Who saith, "A whole I planned,

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"

Not that, amassing flowers,

Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours, Which lily leave and then as best recall ?" Not that, admiring stars,

It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;

6

Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"

12

Not for such hopes and fears

80

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence

For the fullness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?

Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?

Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?

Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,

Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:

But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;

The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know. 88

Low kinds exist without,

Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.