So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!
This chamber for example-turn your
head-

All that's behind us! You don't understand

Nor care to understand about my art, 55 But you can hear at least when people speak:

And that cartoon, the second from the door

-It is the thing, Love! so such thing should be

Behold Madonna!-I am bold to say.
I can do with my pencil what I know, 60
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,

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Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt

This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.

Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,

Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,

Enter and take their place there sure enough,

85 Though they come back and cannot tell the world.

My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.

The sudden blood of these men! at a word

Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.

I, painting from myself, and to myself, 90 Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame

Or their praise either. Somebody remarks Morello's outline there is wrongly traced, His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, Rightly traced and well ordered; what of

A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, Its body, so to speak: its soul is right, He means right-that, a child may understand.

Still, what an arm! and I could alter it: 115 But all the play, the insight and the stretch

Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?

Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul,

We might have risen to Rafael, I and you! Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think

120

Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!

Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged

"God and the glory! never care for gain.
The present by the future, what is that?
Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo! 130
Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"
I might have done it for you. So it seems:
Perhaps not. All is as God overrules.
Beside, incentives come from the soul's
self;

Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts,

And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond,

This in the background, waiting on my work,

To crown the issue with a last reward! 164 A good time, was it not, my kingly days? And had you not grown restless

but I know

'Tis done and past; 'twas right, my instinct said;

you? 135 What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo? In this world, who can do a thing, will not;

And who would do it, cannot, I perceive: Yet the will's somewhat-somewhat, too,

the power

And thus we half-men struggle. At the end,

140

God, I conclude, compensates, punishes. 'Tis safer for me, if the award be strict, That I am something underrated here, Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth.

tempt

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.

210

at last,

Inside the melancholy little house

Since there my past life lies, why alter it? The very wrong to Francis!-it is true

passed through the body and gone, But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new: What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;

And what is, shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too. 40

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,

All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth, All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole, Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth: Had I written the same, made versestill effect proceeds from cause, 45 Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;

It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,

Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,

50

Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are! And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man

That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star. Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:

It is everywhere in the world-loud, soft, and all is said:

Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought: 55 And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;

Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow; For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,

That he even gave it a thought, the

gone thing was to go.

60

Never to be again! But many more of

the kind