Page images
PDF
EPUB

It does not say to folks

remember matins,

Or, mind your fast next Friday ! Why, for this
What need of art at all? A skull and bones,
Two bits of stick nailed cross-wise, or, what's best,
A bell to chime the hour with, does as well.

I painted a Saint Laurence six months since
At Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style :
"How looks my painting, now the scaffold's down?"
I ask a brother: " Hugely," he returns

66

Already not one phiz of your three slaves

Who turn the Deacon off his toasted side,

But's scratched and prodded to our heart's content,
The pious people have so eased their own
With coming to say prayers there in a rage:
We get on fast to see the bricks beneath.
Expect another job this time next year,

For pity and religion grow i' the crowd

Your painting serves its purpose!" Hang the fools!

That is — you'll not mistake an idle word

Spoke in a huff by a poor monk, Got wot,

320

330

Tasting the air this spicy night which turns.

The unaccustomed head like Chianti wine!

Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now!
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

340

323. Saint Laurence: suffered martydom in the reign of the Emperor Valerian, A.D. 258. He was broiled to death on a gridiron.

327. Already not one phiz of your three slaves... but's scratched:

the people are so indignant at what they are doing, in the life-like picture.

336. That is: he fears he has spoken too plainly, and will be reported.

339. Chianti: a wine named from the part of Italy so called.

345. There's for you; he tips them.

Something in Sant' Ambrogio's! 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
Saint John, because he saves the Florentines,
Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and white
The convent's friends and gives them a long day,
And Job, I must have him there past mistake,
The man of Uz (and Us without the z,
Painters who need his patience). Well, all these
Secured at their devotion, up shall come
Out of a corner when you least expect,
As one by a dark stair into a great light,
Music and talking, who but Lippo! I!-
Mazed, motionless, and moon-struck
Back I shrink - what is this I see and hear?
I, caught up with my monk's things by mistake,
My old serge gown and rope that goes all round,
I, in this presence, this pure company!

I'm the man!

Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape?

Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing

Forward, puts out a soft palm—“Not so fast!”
- Addresses the celestial presence,“ nay-

He made

and devised you

you,

after all,

Though he's none of you! could Saint John there, draw

His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?

We come to brother Lippo for all that,

346. Sant' Ambrogio's: a convent in Florence.

354. Saint John: John the Baptist is meant; see v. 375.

35a

360

370

355. Saint Ambrose: born about 340; made archbishop of Milan in 374; died 397; instituted the Ambrosian Chant.

Iste perfecit opus!" So, all smile-
I shuffle sideways with my blushing face
Under the cover of a hundred wings

Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay
And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,

380

Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops

The hot-head husband! Thus I scuttle off

To some safe bench behind, not letting go

The palm of her, the little lily thing

That spoke the good word for me in the nick,
Like the Prior's niece . . . Saint Lucy, I would say.
And so all's saved for me, and for the church
A pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence!
Your hand, sir, and good-bye: no lights, no lights!
The street's hushed, and I know my own way back,
Don't fear me ! There's the gray beginning. Zooks!

390

A FACE.

IF one could have that little head of hers
Painted upon a background of pale gold,
Such as the Tuscan's early art prefers!
No shade encroaching on the matchless mould.
Of those two lips, which should be opening soft
In the pure profile; not as when she laughs,

For that spoils all: but rather as if aloft

Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's

377. Iste perfecit opus! this is on a scroll, in the picture, held by the "sweet angelic slip of a thing."

389. The picture referred to is The Coronation of the Virgin, in the Accademia delle Belle Arti, in Florence. There is a photograph of it in Illustrations to Browning's Poems, Part I., published by the Browning Society, with an interesting description of the picture, by Mr. Ernest Radford. There's no "babe" in the picture. 392. Zooks! it's high time was back and in bed, that my night-larking be not

known.

I. If one could have: Oh, if one could only have, etc.

Burthen of honey-colored buds, to kiss

And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this.
Then her lithe neck, three fingers might surround,
How it should waver, on the pale gold ground,
Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts!
I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts
Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb
Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb :
But these are only massed there, I should think,
Waiting to see some wonder momently

ΙΟ

Grow out, stand full, fade slow against the sky

(That's the pale ground you'd see this sweet face by),

20

All heaven, meanwhile, condensed into one eye

Which fears to lose the wonder, should it wink.

THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT
PRAXED'S CHURCH.

[ROME, 15-]

VANITY, saith the preacher, vanity !

Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews sons mine. . . ah God, I know not! Well -
She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!

9, 10. to kiss and capture: gerundives: to be kissed and captured.

14. Correggio: Antonio Allegri da Correggio, born 1494, died 1534. "He was the first master—the Venetians notwithstanding—to take a scheme of color and chiaro-scuro as the raison d'être of a complete composition, and his brush, responding to the idea, blends light and shade in delicious harmony." — Woltmann and Woermann's History of Painting.

The tomb is imaginary; though it is said to be pointed out to visitors to Saint Praxed's who desire particularly to see it.

1. Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity! "The Bishop on his death-bed has reached Solomon's conclusion that 'all is vanity.' So he proceeds to specify his particular vanity in the choice of a tombstone.". -N. Brit. Rev. 34, p. 367. "In

What's done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we die ourselves,
And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream.
Life, how and what is it? As here I lie
In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask
"Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all.
Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace ;
And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought
With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:
· Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;
Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South
He graced his carrion with, God curse the same!
Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence
One sees the pulpit on the epistle-side,
And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,
And up into the aëry dome where live
The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk;
And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,

And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest,

With those nine columns round me, two and two,
The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands :

Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe

ΙΟ

20

The Palace of Art, Mr. Tennyson has shown the despair and isolation of a soul surrounded by all luxuries of beauty, and living in and for them; but in the end the soul is redeemed and converted to the simple humanities of earth. Mr. Browning has shown that such a sense of isolation and such despair are by no means inevitable; there is a death in life which consists in tranquil satisfaction, a calm pride in the soul's dwelling among the world's gathered treasures of stateliness and beauty. So the unbelieving and worldly spirit of the dying Bishop, who orders his tomb at Saint Praxed's, his sense of the vanity of the world simply because the world is passing out of his reach, the regretful memory of the pleasures of his youth, the envious spite towards Gandolf, who robbed him of the best position for a tomb, and the dread lest his reputed sons should play him false and fail to carry out his designs, are united with a perfect appreciation of Renaissance art, and a luxurious satisfaction, which even a death-bed cannot destroy, in the splendor of voluptuous form and color."- Edward Dowden.

« PreviousContinue »