Volume IV Part 8 (1/2)

Three hundred years his patient statues wait In that small chapel of the dim Saint Lawrence: Day's eyes are breaking bold and pa.s.sionate Over his shoulder, and will flash abhorrence On darkness and with level looks meet fate, When once loose from that marble film of theirs; The Night has wild dreams in her sleep, the Dawn Is haggard as the sleepless, Twilight wears A sort of horror; as the veil withdrawn 'Twixt the artist's soul and works had left them heirs Of speechless thoughts which would not quail nor fawn, Of angers and contempts, of hope and love: For not without a meaning did he place The princely Urbino on the seat above With everlasting shadow on his face, While the slow dawns and twilights disapprove The ashes of his long-extinguished race Which never more shall clog the feet of men.

I do believe, divinest Angelo, That winter-hour in Via Larga, when They bade thee build a statue up in snow[4]

And straight that marvel of thine art again Dissolved beneath the sun's Italian glow, Thine eyes, dilated with the plastic pa.s.sion, Thawing too in drops of wounded manhood, since, To mock alike thine art and indignation, Laughed at the palace-window the new prince,-- (”Aha! this genius needs for exaltation, When all's said and however the proud may wince, A little marble from our princely mines!”) I do believe that hour thou laughedst too For the whole sad world and for thy Florentines, After those few tears, which were only few!

That as, beneath the sun, the grand white lines Of thy snow-statue trembled and withdrew,-- The head, erect as Jove's, being palsied first, The eyelids flattened, the full brow turned blank, The right-hand, raised but now as if it cursed, Dropt, a mere s...o...b..ll, (till the people sank Their voices, though a louder laughter burst From the royal window)--thou couldst proudly thank G.o.d and the prince for promise and presage, And laugh the laugh back, I think verily, Thine eyes being purged by tears of righteous rage To read a wrong into a prophecy, And measure a true great man's heritage Against a mere great-duke's posterity.

I think thy soul said then, ”I do not need A princedom and its quarries, after all; For if I write, paint, carve a word, indeed, On book or board or dust, on floor or wall, The same is kept of G.o.d who taketh heed That not a letter of the meaning fall Or ere it touch and teach His world's deep heart, Outlasting, therefore, all your lords.h.i.+ps, sir!

So keep your stone, beseech you, for your part, To cover up your grave-place and refer The proper t.i.tles; _I_ live by my art.

The thought I threw into this snow shall stir This gazing people when their gaze is done; And the tradition of your act and mine, When all the snow is melted in the sun, Shall gather up, for unborn men, a sign Of what is the true princedom,--ay, and none Shall laugh that day, except the drunk with wine.”

Amen, great Angelo! the day's at hand.

If many laugh not on it, shall we weep?

Much more we must not, let us understand.

Through rhymers sonneteering in their sleep And archaists mumbling dry bones up the land And sketchers lauding ruined towns a-heap,-- Through all that drowsy hum of voices smooth, The hopeful bird mounts carolling from brake, The hopeful child, with leaps to catch his growth, Sings open-eyed for liberty's sweet sake: And I, a singer also from my youth, Prefer to sing with these who are awake, With birds, with babes, with men who will not fear The baptism of the holy morning dew, (And many of such wakers now are here, Complete in their anointed manhood, who Will greatly dare and greatlier persevere,) Than join those old thin voices with my new, And sigh for Italy with some safe sigh Cooped up in music 'twixt an oh and ah,-- Nay, hand in hand with that young child, will I Go singing rather, ”_Bella liberta_,”

Than, with those poets, croon the dead or cry ”_Se tu men bella fossi, Italia!_”

”Less wretched if less fair.” Perhaps a truth Is so far plain in this, that Italy, Long trammelled with the purple of her youth Against her age's ripe activity, Sits still upon her tombs, without death's ruth But also without life's brave energy.

”Now tell us what is Italy?” men ask: And others answer, ”Virgil, Cicero, Catullus, Caesar.” What beside? to task The memory closer--”Why, Boccaccio, Dante, Petrarca,”--and if still the flask Appears to yield its wine by drops too slow,-- ”Angelo, Raffael, Pergolese,”--all Whose strong hearts beat through stone, or charged again The paints with fire of souls electrical, Or broke up heaven for music. What more then?

Why, then, no more. The chaplet's last beads fall In naming the last saints.h.i.+p within ken, And, after that, none prayeth in the land.

Alas, this Italy has too long swept Heroic ashes up for hour-gla.s.s sand; Of her own past, impa.s.sioned nympholept!

Consenting to be nailed here by the hand To the very bay-tree under which she stept A queen of old, and plucked a leafy branch; And, licensing the world too long indeed To use her broad phylacteries to staunch And stop her b.l.o.o.d.y lips, she takes no heed How one clear word would draw an avalanche Of living sons around her, to succeed The vanished generations. Can she count These oil-eaters with large live mobile mouths Agape for macaroni, in the amount Of consecrated heroes of her south's Bright rosary? The pitcher at the fount, The gift of G.o.ds, being broken, she much loathes To let the ground-leaves of the place confer A natural bowl. So henceforth she would seem No nation, but the poet's pensioner, With alms from every land of song and dream, While aye her pipers sadly pipe of her Until their proper breaths, in that extreme Of sighing, split the reed on which they played: Of which, no more. But never say ”no more”

To Italy's life! Her memories undismayed Still argue ”evermore;” her graves implore Her future to be strong and not afraid; Her very statues send their looks before.

We do not serve the dead--the past is past.

G.o.d lives, and lifts His glorious mornings up Before the eyes of men awake at last, Who put away the meats they used to sup, And down upon the dust of earth outcast The dregs remaining of the ancient cup, Then turn to wakeful prayer and worthy act.

The Dead, upon their awful 'vantage ground, The sun not in their faces, shall abstract No more our strength; we will not be discrowned As guardians of their crowns, nor deign transact A barter of the present, for a sound Of good so counted in the foregone days.

O Dead, ye shall no longer cling to us With rigid hands of desiccating praise, And drag us backward by the garment thus, To stand and laud you in long-drawn virelays!

We will not henceforth be oblivious Of our own lives, because ye lived before, Nor of our acts, because ye acted well.

We thank you that ye first unlatched the door, But will not make it inaccessible By thankings on the threshold any more.

We hurry onward to extinguish h.e.l.l With our fresh souls, our younger hope, and G.o.d's Maturity of purpose. Soon shall we Die also! and, that then our periods Of life may round themselves to memory As smoothly as on our graves the burial-sods, We now must look to it to excel as ye, And bear our age as far, unlimited By the last mind-mark; so, to be invoked By future generations, as their Dead.

'T is true that when the dust of death has choked A great man's voice, the common words he said Turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked Like horses, draw like griffins: this is true And acceptable. I, too, should desire, When men make record, with the flowers they strew, ”Savonarola's soul went out in fire Upon our Grand-duke's piazza,[5] and burned through A moment first, or ere he did expire, The veil betwixt the right and wrong, and showed How near G.o.d sat and judged the judges there,--”

Upon the self-same pavement overstrewed To cast my violets with as reverent care, And prove that all the winters which have snowed Cannot snow out the scent from stones and air, Of a sincere man's virtues. This was he, Savonarola, who, while Peter sank With his whole boat-load, called courageously ”Wake Christ, wake Christ!”--who, having tried the tank Of old church-waters used for baptistry Ere Luther came to spill them, swore they stank; Who also by a princely deathbed cried, ”Loose Florence, or G.o.d will not loose thy soul!”

Then fell back the Magnificent and died Beneath the star-look shooting from the cowl, Which turned to wormwood-bitterness the wide Deep sea of his ambitions. It were foul To grudge Savonarola and the rest Their violets: rather pay them quick and fres.h.!.+

The emphasis of death makes manifest The eloquence of action in our flesh; And men who, living, were but dimly guessed, When once free from their life's entangled mesh, Show their full length in graves, or oft indeed Exaggerate their stature, in the flat, To n.o.ble admirations which exceed Most n.o.bly, yet will calculate in that But accurately. We, who are the seed Of buried creatures, if we turned and spat Upon our antecedents, we were vile.

Bring violets rather. If these had not walked Their furlong, could we hope to walk our mile?

Therefore bring violets. Yet if we self-baulked Stand still, a-strewing violets all the while, These moved in vain, of whom we have vainly talked.

So rise up henceforth with a cheerful smile, And having strewn the violets, reap the corn, And having reaped and garnered, bring the plough And draw new furrows 'neath the healthy morn, And plant the great Hereafter in this Now.

Of old 't was so. How step by step was worn, As each man gained on each securely!--how Each by his own strength sought his own Ideal,-- The ultimate Perfection leaning bright From out the sun and stars to bless the leal And earnest search of all for Fair and Right Through doubtful forms by earth accounted real!

Because old Jubal blew into delight The souls of men with clear-piped melodies, If youthful Asaph were content at most To draw from Jubal's grave, with listening eyes, Traditionary music's floating ghost Into the gra.s.s-grown silence, were it wise?

And was 't not wiser, Jubal's breath being lost, That Miriam clashed her cymbals to surprise The sun between her white arms flung apart, With new glad golden sounds? that David's strings O'erflowed his hand with music from his heart?

So harmony grows full from many springs, And happy accident turns holy art.

You enter, in your Florence wanderings, The church of Saint Maria Novella. Pa.s.s The left stair, where at plague-time Machiavel[6]

Saw One with set fair face as in a gla.s.s, Dressed out against the fear of death and h.e.l.l, Rustling her silks in pauses of the ma.s.s, To keep the thought off how her husband fell, When she left home, stark dead across her feet,-- The stair leads up to what the Orgagnas save Of Dante's daemons; you, in pa.s.sing it, Ascend the right stair from the farther nave To muse in a small chapel scarcely lit By Cimabue's Virgin. Bright and brave, That picture was accounted, mark, of old: A king stood bare before its sovran grace,[7]

A reverent people shouted to behold The picture, not the king, and even the place Containing such a miracle grew bold, Named the Glad Borgo from that beauteous face Which thrilled the artist, after work, to think His own ideal Mary-smile should stand So very near him,--he, within the brink Of all that glory, let in by his hand With too divine a rashness! Yet none shrink Who come to gaze here now; albeit 't was planned Sublimely in the thought's simplicity: The Lady, throned in empyreal state, Minds only the young Babe upon her knee, While sidelong angels bear the royal weight, Prostrated meekly, smiling tenderly Oblivion of their wings; the Child thereat Stretching its hand like G.o.d. If any should, Because of some stiff draperies and loose joints, Gaze scorn down from the heights of Raffaelhood On Cimabue's picture,--Heaven anoints The head of no such critic, and his blood The poet's curse strikes full on and appoints To ague and cold spasms for evermore.

A n.o.ble picture! worthy of the shout Wherewith along the streets the people bore Its cherub-faces which the sun threw out Until they stooped and entered the church door.

Yet rightly was young Giotto talked about, Whom Cimabue found among the sheep,[8]

And knew, as G.o.ds know G.o.ds, and carried home To paint the things he had painted, with a deep And fuller insight, and so overcome His chapel-Lady with a heavenlier sweep Of light: for thus we mount into the sum Of great things known or acted. I hold, too, That Cimabue smiled upon the lad At the first stroke which pa.s.sed what he could do, Or else his Virgin's smile had never had Such sweetness in 't. All great men who foreknew Their heirs in art, for art's sake have been glad, And bent their old white heads as if uncrowned, Fanatics of their pure Ideals still Far more than of their triumphs, which were found With some less vehement struggle of the will.

If old Margheritone trembled, swooned And died despairing at the open sill Of other men's achievements (who achieved, By loving art beyond the master), he Was old Margheritone, and conceived Never, at first youth and most ecstasy, A Virgin like that dream of one, which heaved The death-sigh from his heart. If wistfully Margheritone sickened at the smell Of Cimabue's laurel, let him go!

For Cimabue stood up very well In spite of Giotto's, and Angelico The artist-saint kept smiling in his cell The smile with which he welcomed the sweet slow Inbreak of angels (whitening through the dim That he might paint them), while the sudden sense Of Raffael's future was revealed to him By force of his own fair works' competence.