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!

I often am much wearier than you think,

This evening more than usual: and it seems

Here by the window, with your hand in mine,
And look a half hour forth on Fiesole,
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!
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
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,
And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,
While she looks

no one's very dear, no less. You smile? why, there's ray picture ready made, There's what we painters call our harmony!

10

20

30

– 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.

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 every thing.
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;
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,

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,
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;
And just as much they used to say in France.
At any rate 'tis easy, all of it!

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60

35. A common grayness: Andrea del Sarto was distinguished for his skill In chiaro-oscuro.

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,
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, —
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,
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,
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,

82. low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand: "Andrea del Sarto's was, after all, but the 'low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand,' and therefore his perfect art does not touch our hearts like that of Fra Bartolommeo, who occupies about the same position with regard to the great masters of the century as Andrea del Sarto. Fra Bartolommeo spoke from his heart. He was moved by the spirit, so to speak, to express his pure and holy thoughts in beautiful language, and the ideal that presented itself to his mind, and from which he, equally with Raphael, worked, approached almost as closely as Raphael's to that abstract beauty after which they both longed. Andrea del Sarto had no such longing: he was content with the loveliness of earth. This he could understand and imitate in its fullest perfection, and therefore he troubled himself but little about the 'wondrous paterne' laid up in heaven. Many of his Madonnas have greater beauty, strictly speaking, than those of Bartolommeo, or even of Raphael; but we miss in them that mysterious spiritual loveliness that gives the latter their chief charm."-Hea ton's History of Painting.

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?
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;

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.
('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;
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 :
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,

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ΙΙΟ

93. Morello: the highest of the spurs of the Apennines to the north of Flor

ence.

96. Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? it's beyond their criticism.

105. The Urbinate: Raphael Santi, born 1483, in Urbino. Andrea sees in Raphael, whose technique was inferior to his own, his superior, as he reached above and through his art for it gives way.

106. George Vasari: see note under St. 9 of Old Pictures in Florence.

We might have risen to Rafael, I and you.
Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think-
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
Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!
Had the mouth there urged
never care for gain.

Some women do so.

"God and the glory!

The present by the future, what is that?
Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo !
Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three !"
I might have done it for you.
So it seems:
Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules.
Beside, incentives come from the soul's self;
The rest avail not. Why do I need you?
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,
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,
For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.

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130

140

120. Nay, Love, you did give all I asked: it must be understood that his wife has replied with pique, to what he said in the two preceding lines.

129. by the future: when placed by, in comparison with, the future. 130. Agnolo: Michael Angelo (more correctly, Agnolo) Buonarotti. See note under St. 30 of Old Pictures in Florence.

146. For fear of chancing on the Paris lords: by reason of his breaking the faith he had pledged to Francis I. of France, and using for his own purposes, or his wife's, the money with which the king had entrusted him to purchase works of art in Italy.