Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (13 page)

And stood about the neat low truckle-bed,

With the heavenly manner of relieving guard.

Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief,

Through a whole campaign of the world’s life and death,

Doing the King’s work all the dim day long,

In his old coat and up to knees in mud,

Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust, –

And, now the day was won, relieved at once!

[110] No further show or need for that old coat,

You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while

How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I!

A second, and the angels alter that.

Well, I could never write a verse, – could you?

Let’s to the Prado and make the most of time.

The Patriot

An Old Story

I

It was roses, roses, all the way,

With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:

The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,

The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,

A year ago on this very day.

II

The air broke into a mist with bells,

The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.

Had I said, ‘Good folk, mere noise repels –

But give me your sun from yonder skies!’

[10] They had answered, ‘And afterward, what else?’

III

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun

To give it my loving friends to keep!

Naught man could do, have I left undone:

And you see my harvest, what I reap

This very day, now a year is run.

IV

There’s nobody on the house-tops now –

Just a palsied few at the windows set;

For the best of the sight is, all allow,

At the Shambles’ Gate – or, better yet,

[20] By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow.

V

I go in the rain, and, more than needs,

A rope cuts both my wrists behind;

And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,

For they fling, whoever has a mind,

Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds.

VI

Thus I entered, and thus I go!

In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.

‘Paid by the world, what dost thou owe

Me?’ – God might question; now instead,

[30] ’Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.

Memorabilia

I

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,

And did he stop and speak to you

And did you speak to him again?

How strange it seems and new!

II

But you were living before that,

And also you are living after;

And the memory I started at –

My starting moves your laughter.

III

I crossed a moor, with a name of its own

[10] And a certain use in the world no doubt,

Yet a hand’s-breadth of it shines alone

’Mid the blank miles round about:

IV

For there I picked up on the heather

And there I put inside my breast

A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!

Well, I forget the rest.

Andrea del Sarto

(Called ‘The Faultless Painter’)

But do not let us quarrel any more,

No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:

Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.

You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?

I’ll work then for your friend’s friend, never fear,

Treat his own subject after his own way,

Fix his own time, accept too his own price,

And shut the money into this small hand

When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?

[10] Oh, I’ll content him, – but tomorrow, Love!

I often am much wearier than you think,

This evening more than usual, and it seems

As if – forgive now – should you let me sit

Here by the window with your hand in mine

And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,

Both of one mind, as married people use,

Quietly, quietly the evening through,

I might get up tomorrow to my work

Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.

[20] Tomorrow, how you shall be glad for this!

Your soft hand is a woman of itself,

And mine the man’s bared breast she curls inside.

Don’t count the time lost, neither; you must serve

For each of the five pictures we require:

It saves a model. So! keep looking so –

My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!

– How could you ever prick those perfect ears,

Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet –

My face, my moon, my everybody’s moon,

[30] Which everybody looks on and calls his,

And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,

While she looks – no one’s: very dear, no less.

You smile? why, there’s my picture ready made,

There’s what we painters call our harmony!

A common greyness silvers everything, –

All in a twilight, you and I alike

– You, at the point of your first pride in me

(That’s gone you know), – but I, at every point;

My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down

[40] To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.

There’s the bell clinking from the chapel-top;

That length of convent-wall across the way

Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;

The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,

And autumn grows, autumn in everything.

Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape

As if I saw alike my work and self

And all that I was born to be and do,

A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God’s hand.

[50] How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead;

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,

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.

[60] 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 ’tis easy, all of it!

No sketches first, no studies, that’s long past:

I do what many dream of, all their lives,

[70] – 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, Someone says,

(I know his name, no matter) – so much less!

Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.

There burns a truer light of God in them,

[80] In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,

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,

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.

[90] I, painting from myself and to myself,

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 that?

Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what’s a heaven for? All is silver-grey

Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!

[100] I know both what I want and what might gain,

And yet how profitless to know, to sigh

‘Had I been two, another and myself,

Our head would have o’erlooked the world!’ No doubt.

Yonder’s a work now, of that famous youth

The Urbinate who died five years ago.

(’Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.)

Well, I can fancy how he did it all,

Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,

Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,

[110] Above and through his art – for it gives way;

That arm is wrongly put – and there again –

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:

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!

[120] Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think –

More than I merit, yes, by many times.

But had you – oh, with the same perfect brow,

And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,

And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird

The fowler’s pipe, and follows to the snare –

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?

[130] Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!

Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!’

I might have done it for you. So it seems:

Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules.

Beside, incentives come from the soul’s self;

The rest avail not. Why do I need you?

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 –

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

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.

I dared not, do you know, leave home all day,

For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.

The best is when they pass and look aside;

But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all.

Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time,

[150] And that long festal year at Fontainebleau!

I surely then could sometimes leave the ground,

Put on the glory, Rafael’s daily wear,

In that humane great monarch’s golden look, –

One finger in his beard or twisted curl

Over his mouth’s good mark that made the smile,

One arm about my shoulder, round my neck,

The jingle of his gold chain in my ear,

I painting proudly with his breath on me,

All his court round him, seeing with his eyes,

[160] Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls

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!

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;

Too live the life grew, golden and not grey,

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

[170] 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 it ere 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 –’

[180] Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge

Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows

My better fortune, I resolve to think.

For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,

Said one day Agnolo, his very self,

To Rafael … I have known it all these years …

(When the young man was flaming out his thoughts

Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see,

Too lifted up in heart because of it)

‘Friend, there’s a certain sorry little scrub

[190] Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,

Who, were he set to plan and execute

As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,

Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!’

To Rafael’s! – And indeed the arm is wrong.

I hardly dare … yet, only you to see,

Give the chalk here – quick, thus the line should go!

Ay, but the soul! he’s Rafael! rub it out!

Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth,

(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo?

[200] Do you forget already words like those?)

If really there was such a chance, so lost, –

Is, whether you’re – not grateful – but more pleased.

Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed!