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If I drew higher things with the same truth!
That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place,
Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh,
It makes me mad to see what men shall do
And we in our graves! This world's no
blot for us,

Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:

To find its meaning is my meat and drink.

"Ay, but you don't so instigate to prayer!"

Strikes in the Prior: "when your meaning's plain

It does not say to folk-remember matins, Or, mind you fast next Friday!" Why, for this

What need of art at all? A skull and bones,

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then go, see

Something in Sant' Ambrogio's! Bless the nuns!

They want a cast o' my office. I shall paint

God in the midst, Madonna and her babe,
Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood,
Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet
As puff on puff of grated orris-root
When ladies crowd to Church at midsun-

mer.

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

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, 69 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, In their vexed beating stuffed and stoppedup brain,

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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,

Though they come back and cannot tell the world.

My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.

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