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 't is easy, all of it!

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, Some

"T is done and past; 't was right, my instinct said;

Too live the life grew, golden and not gray,

And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt

Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.

How could it end in any other way? You called me, and I came home to your heart.

The triumph was-to reach and stay there; since

I reached itere the triumph, what is lost? Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold,

You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine! "Rafael did this, Andrea painted that; The Roman's is the better when you pray, But still the other's Virgin was his wife"

Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge Both pictures in your presence; clearer

If you would sit thus by me every night I should work better, do you comprehend?

I mean that I should earn more, give you more.

See, it is settled dusk now; there's a star;

Morello's gone, the watch-lights show the wall,

The cue-owls speak the name we call them by.

Come from the window, love,—come in, at last,

Inside the melancholy little house

We built to be so gay with. God is just. King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights

When I look up from painting, eyes tired out,

The walls become illumined, brick from brick

Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold,

That gold of his I did cement them with! Let us but love each other. Must you go? That Cousin here again? he waits outside?

Must see you-you, and not with me? Those loans?

More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that?

Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend ?

While hand and eye and something of a heart

Are left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth?

I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit
The gray remainder of the evening out,
Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly
How I could paint, were I but back in
France,

One picture, just one more-the Virgin's

face.

Not yours this time! I want you at my side

To hear them-that is, Michel AgnoloJudge all I do and tell you of its worth.

V

66

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 i' the hair o' the wicked,

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 Florence)

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. Says he-Certain people of import

ance

(Such he gave his daily dreadful line to) Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet."

Says the poet - "Then I stopped my painting."

VI

You and I would rather see that angel, Painted by the tenderness of Dante, Would we not? than read a fresh Inferno.

VII

You and I will never see that picture. While he mused on love and Beatrice, While he softened o'er his outlined angel, In they broke, those "people of import"" ance:

We and Bice bear the loss forever.

VIII

What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's pic ture?

This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not

Once, and only once, and for one only,
(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a lan-
guage

Fit and fair and simple and sufficient-
Using nature that's an art to others,
Not, this one time, art that's turned his
nature.

Ay, of all the artists living, loving,

Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat.

Never dares the man put off the prophet.

ΧΙ

Did he love one face from out the thousands,

(Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely,

Were she but the Ethiopian bondslave,) He would envy yon dumb patient camel, Keeping a reserve of scanty water Meant to save his own life in the desert; Ready in the desert to deliver (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened)

Hoard and life together for his mistress.

XII

I shall never, in the years remaining, Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,

Make you music that should all-expres

me;

So it seems I stand on my attainment This of verse alone, one life allows me Verse and nothing else have I to give you Other heights in other lives, God willing All the gifts from all the heights, you own, Love!

XIII

Yet a semblance of resource avails usShade 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 hairbrush,

Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,

Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little Makes a strange art of an art familiar, Fills his lady's missal-marge 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

Love, you saw me gather men and

women,

Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, Enter each and all, and use their service,