That is impossible.Do I not see you Attack the marble blocks with the same fury As twenty years ago?
MICHAEL ANGELO.
'T is an old habit.
I must have learned it early from my nurse At Setignano, the stone-mason's wife;For the first sounds I heard were of the chisel chipping away the stone.
URBINO.
At every stroke You strike fire with your chisel.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Ay, because The marble is too hard.
URBINO.
It is a block That Topolino sent you from Carrara.
He is a judge of marble.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
I remember.
With it he sent me something of his ******,--A Mercury, with long body and short legs, As if by any possibility A messenger of the gods could have short legs.
It was no more like Mercury than you are, But rather like those little plaster figures That peddlers hawk about the villages As images of saints.But luckily For Topolino, there are many people Who see no difference between what is best And what is only good, or not even good;So that poor artists stand in their esteem On the same level with the best, or higher.
URBINO.
How Eccellenza laughed!
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Poor Topolino!
All men are not born artists, nor will labor E'er make them artists.
URBINO.
No, no more Than Emperors, or Popes, or Cardinals.
One must be chosen for it.I have been Your color-grinder six and twenty years, And am not yet an artist.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Some have eyes That see not; but in every block of marble I see a statue,--see it as distinctly As if it stood before me shaped and perfect In attitude and action.I have only To hew away the stone walls that imprison The lovely apparition, and reveal it To other eyes as mine already see it.
But I grow old and weak.What wilt thou do When I am dead, Urbino?
URBINO.
Eccellenza, I must then serve another master.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Never!
Bitter is servitude at best.Already So many years hast thou been serving me;But rather as a friend than as a servant.
We have grown old together.Dost thou think So meanly of this Michael Angelo As to imagine he would let thee serve, When he is free from service? Take this purse, Two thousand crowns in gold.
URBINO.
Two thousand crowns!
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Ay, it will make thee rich.Thou shalt not die A beggar in a hospital.
URBINO.
Oh, Master!
MICHAEL ANGELO.
I cannot have them with me on the journey That I am undertaking.The last garment That men will make for me will have no pockets.
URBINO, kissing the hand of MICHAEL ANGELO.
My generous master!
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Hush!
URBINO.
My Providence!
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Not a word more.Go now to bed, old man.
Thou hast served Michael Angelo.Remember, Henceforward thou shalt serve no other master.
VII
THE OAKS OF MONTE LUCA
MICHAEL ANGELO, alone in the woods.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
How still it is among these ancient oaks!
Surges and undulations of the air Uplift the leafy boughs, and let them fall With scarce a sound.Such sylvan quietudes Become old age.These huge centennial oaks, That may have heard in infancy the trumpets Of Barbarossa's cavalry, deride Man's brief existence, that with all his strength He cannot stretch beyond the hundredth year.
This little acorn, turbaned like the Turk, Which with my foot I spurn, may be an oak Hereafter, feeding with its bitter mast The fierce wild boar, and tossing in its arms The cradled nests of birds, when all the men That now inhabit this vast universe, They and their children, and their children's children, Shall be but dust and mould, and nothing more.
Through openings in the trees I see below me The valley of Clitumnus, with its farms And snow-white oxen grazing in the shade Of the tall poplars on the river's brink.
O Nature, gentle mother, tender nurse!
I who have never loved thee as I ought, But wasted all my years immured in cities, And breathed the stifling atmosphere of streets, Now come to thee for refuge.Here is peace.
Yonder I see the little hermitages Dotting the mountain side with points of light, And here St.Julian's convent, like a nest Of curlews, clinging to some windy cliff.
Beyond the broad, illimitable plain Down sinks the sun, red as Apollo's quoit, That, by the envious Zephyr blown aside, Struck Hyacinthus dead, and stained the earth With his young blood, that blossomed into flowers.
And now, instead of these fair deities Dread demons haunt the earth; hermits inhabit The leafy homes of sylvan Hamadryads;And jovial friars, rotund and rubicund, Replace the old Silenus with his ass.
Here underneath these venerable oaks, Wrinkled and brown and gnarled like them with age, A brother of the monastery sits, Lost in his meditations.What may be The questions that perplex, the hopes that cheer him?
Good-evening, holy father.
MONK.
God be with you.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Pardon a stranger if he interrupt Your meditations.
MONK.
It was but a dream,--
The old, old dream, that never will come true;The dream that all my life I have been dreaming, And yet is still a dream.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
All men have dreams:
I have had mine; but none of them came true;They were but vanity.Sometimes I think The happiness of man lies in pursuing, Not in possessing; for the things possessed Lose half their value.Tell me of your dream.
MONK.
The yearning of my heart, my sole desire, That like the sheaf of Joseph stands up right, While all the others bend and bow to it;The passion that torments me, and that breathes New meaning into the dead forms of prayer, Is that with mortal eyes I may behold The Eternal City.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Rome?
MONK.
There is but one;
The rest are merely names.I think of it As the Celestial City, paved with gold, And sentinelled with angels.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Would it were.
I have just fled from it.It is beleaguered By Spanish troops, led by the Duke of Alva.
MONK.
But still for me 't is the Celestial City, And I would see it once before I die.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Each one must bear his cross.
MONK.
Were it a cross That had been laid upon me, I could bear it, Or fall with it.It is a crucifix;I am nailed hand and foot, and I am dying!
MICHAEL ANGELO.
What would you see in Rome?
MONK.
His Holiness.
MICHAEL ANGELO.