Fra Bastian, my Era Bastian, might have done it;But he is lost to art.The Papal Seals, Like leaden weights upon a dead man's eyes, Press down his lids; and so the burden falls On Michael Angelo, Chief Architect And Painter of the Apostolic Palace.
That is the title they cajole me with, To make me do their work and leave my own;But having once begun, I turn not back.
Blow, ye bright angels, on your golden trumpets To the four corners of the earth, and wake The dead to judgment! Ye recording angels, Open your books and read? Ye dead awake!
Rise from your graves, drowsy and drugged with death, As men who suddenly aroused from sleep Look round amazed, and know not where they are!
In happy hours, when the imagination Wakes like a wind at midnight, and the soul Trembles in all its leaves, it is a joy To be uplifted on its wings, and listen To the prophetic voices in the air That call us onward.Then the work we do Is a delight, and the obedient hand Never grows weary.But how different is it En the disconsolate, discouraged hours, When all the wisdom of the world appears As trivial as the gossip of a nurse In a sick-room, and all our work seems useless,What is it guides my hand, what thoughts possess me, That I have drawn her face among the angels, Where she will be hereafter? O sweet dreams, That through the vacant chambers of my heart Walk in the silence, as familiar phantoms Frequent an ancient house, what will ye with me?
'T is said that Emperors write their names in green When under age, but when of age in purple.
So Love, the greatest Emperor of them all, Writes his in green at first, but afterwards In the imperial purple of our blood.
First love or last love,--which of these two passions Is more omnipotent? Which is more fair, The star of morning or the evening star?
The sunrise or the sunset of the heart?
The hour when we look forth to the unknown, And the advancing day consumes the shadows, Or that when all the landscape of our lives Lies stretched behind us, and familiar places Gleam in the distance, and sweet memories Rise like a tender haze, and magnify The objects we behold, that soon must vanish?
What matters it to me, whose countenance Is like the Laocoon's, full of pain; whose forehead Is a ploughed harvest-field, where three-score years Have sown in sorrow and have reaped in anguish;To me, the artisan, to whom all women Have been as if they were not, or at most A sudden rush of pigeons in the air, A flutter of wings, a sound, and then a silence?
I am too old for love; I am too old To flatter and delude myself with visions Of never-ending friendship with fair women, Imaginations, fantasies, illusions, In which the things that cannot be take shape, And seem to be, and for the moment are.
[Convent bells ring.
Distant and near and low and loud the bells, Dominican, Benedictine, and Franciscan, Jangle and wrangle in their airy towers, Discordant as the brotherhoods themselves In their dim cloisters.The descending sun Seems to caress the city that he loves, And crowns it with the aureole of a saint.
I will go forth and breathe the air a while.
II.
SAN SILVESTRO
A Chapel in the Church of San Silvestra on Monte Cavallo.
VITTORIA COLONNA, CLAUDIO TOLOMMEI, and others.
VITTORIA.
Here let us rest a while, until the crowd Has left the church.I have already sent For Michael Angelo to join us here.
MESSER CLAUDIO.
After Fra Bernardino's wise discourse On the Pauline Epistles, certainly Some words of Michael Angelo on Art Were not amiss, to bring us back to earth.
MICHAEL ANGELO, at the door.
How like a Saint or Goddess she appears;
Diana or Madonna, which I know not!
In attitude and aspect formed to be At once the artist's worship and despair!
VITTORIA.
Welcome, Maestro.We were waiting for you.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
I met your messenger upon the way, And hastened hither.
VITTORIA.
It is kind of you To come to us, who linger here like gossips Wasting the afternoon in idle talk.
These are all friends of mine and friends of yours.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
If friends of yours, then are they friends of mine.
Pardon me, gentlemen.But when I entered I saw but the Marchesa.
VITTORIA.
Take this seat Between me and Ser Claudio Tolommei, Who still maintains that our Italian tongue Should be called Tuscan.But for that offence We will not quarrel with him.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Eccellenza--
VITTORIA.
Ser Claudio has banished Eccellenza And all such titles from the Tuscan tongue.
MESSER CLAUDIO.
'T is the abuse of them and not the use I deprecate.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
The use or the abuse It matters not.Let them all go together, As empty phrases and frivolities, And common as gold-lace upon the collar Of an obsequious lackey.
VITTORIA.
That may be, But something of politeness would go with them;We should lose something of the stately manners Of the old school.
MESSER CLAUDIO.
Undoubtedly.
VITTORlA.
But that Is not what occupies my thoughts at present, Nor why I sent for you, Messer Michele.
It was to counsel me.His Holiness Has granted me permission, long desired, To build a convent in this neighborhood, Where the old tower is standing, from whose top Nero looked down upon the burning city.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
It is an inspiration!
VITTORIA.
I am doubtful How I shall build; how large to make the convent, And which way fronting.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Ah, to build, to build!
That is the noblest art of all the arts.