I drew men's faces on my copy-books, Scrawled them within the antiphonary's marge, 130 Joined legs and arms to the long musicnotes, Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's, And made a string of pictures of the world Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun, On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black. "Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d'ye say? In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark. What if at last we get our man of parts, We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese And Preaching Friars, to do our church up And put the front on it that ought to be!" And hereupon he bade me daub away. Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank, Never was such prompt disemburdening. First, every sort of monk, the black and white, I drew them, fat and lean: then, folk at church, From good old gossips waiting to confess Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candleends, To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot, Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting Addresses the celestial presence," nay He made you and devised you, after all, Though he's none of you! Could Saint John there draw His camel-hair make up a painting-brush? We come to brother Lippo for all that, Iste perfecit opus!" So, all smile I shuffle sideways with my blushing face Under the cover of a hundred wings Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you 're gay 380 And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut, Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops To some safe bench behind, not letting go Like the Prior's niece... Saint Lucy, I would say. And so all's saved for me, and for the Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweetMy face, my moon, my everybody's moon, Which everybody looks on and calls his, 30 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 grayness 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 chapeltop; That length of convent-wall across the way Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; The last monk leaves the garden; days de crease, And autumn grows, autumn in everything. How strange now looks the life he makes us lead; So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! 50 |