It's natural a poor monk out of bounds
Should have his apt word to excuse himself:
And hearken how I plot to make amends.
I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece
. . . There's for you! Give me six months,

then go, see Something in Sant' Ambrogio's!1 Bless the nuns!

They want a cast o' my office. I shall paint
God in the midst, Madonna and her babe,
Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood,
Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet
As puff on puff of grated orris-root
When ladies crowd to Church at midsummer.
And then i' the front, of course a saint or

two

351

The street's hushed, and I know my own way back,

Don't fear me! There's the grey beginning. Zooks!

ONE WORD MORE

TO E. B. B.

LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1855
I

There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together;
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

II

Rafael made a century of sonnets,
Made and wrote them in a certain volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
Else he only used to draw Madonnas:
These, the world might view - but one, the
volume.

Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.

1"He painted the picture."

Dante once prepared to paint an angel:
Whom to please? You whisper "Beatrice."
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 i̇' the hair o' the wicked,7
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 the Madonna del Granduca, representing her as appearing to a votary in a vision 4 In the Louvre at Paris, the Madonna called La Belle Jardinière is seated in a garden. 5a Florentine painter (1575-1642) Beatrice Portinari, Dante's ideal love 7 cf. Inferno, xxxii, 97

AE

Ay, of all the artists living, loving,
None but would forego his proper dowry,
Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,
Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,
Put to proof art alien to the artist's,
Once, and only once, and for one only, 70
So to be the man and leave the artist,
Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow.

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-marge1 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.2
Let me speak this once in my true person,
Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea,
Though the fruit of speech be just this sen-

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 moun-
tain?

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