I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!
You need not clap your torches to my face.
Zooks,1 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 end
Where 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, 10
Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company!
Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll take

And count fair prize what comes into their net?

He's Judas to a tittle, that man is!

Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends.
Lord, I'm not angry! Bid your hangdogs go
Drink out this quarter-florin to the health
Of the munificent House that harbours me
(And many more beside, lads! more beside!)
And all's come square again. I'd like his face-
His, elbowing on his comrade in the door 32
With the pike and lantern, - for the slave
that holds

John Baptist's head a-dangle by the hair With one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say)

And 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,
You know them and they take you? like
enough!

41

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 bands

To 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 saints And saints again. I could not paint all night

49

If Master Cosimo announced himself,
Mum's the word naturally; but a monk!
Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now! 80
I was a baby when my mother died
And father died and left me in the street.
I starved there, God knows how, a year or two
On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,
Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day,
My 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,
By the straight cut to the convent. Six words
there,

90

While I stood munching my first bread that month:

1i.e., they sang in turn 2 the famous church of San Lorenzo 3 an ascetic, and one of the four greatest church fathers seized

His 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 less
For 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 3
marge,
130

Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,
Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's,

1 walking in procession with the Sacrament 2 the magistrates 3 book of antiphons or respon

sive songs

And made a string of pictures of the world Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun, On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black.

"Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d'ye say?

139

In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark.
What if at last we get our man of parts,
We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese1
And Preaching Friars,2 to do our church up fine
And 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,
I drew them, fat and lean: then, folk at
church,

From good old gossips waiting to confess Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candleends,

To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,
Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there
With the little children round him in a row 151
Of admiration, half for his beard and half
For that white anger of his victim's son
Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,
Signing himself with the other because of
Christ

(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this
After the passion of a thousand years)
Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head,
(Which the intense eyes looked through)

came at eve

On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf, 160 Her 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. The monks closed in a circle and praised loud Till checked, taught what to see and not to see, Being simple bodies, "That's the very

man!

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 old And make him swear to never kiss the girls. I'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 just

To plant a flag in, or tie up a horse! 230 And yet the old schooling sticks, the old grave