Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

"Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub
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 Michael Angelo ?
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!
This hour has been an hour! Another smile?

If

you would sit thus by me every night

I should work better, do you comprehend?

I mean that I should earn more, give you more.
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.
Come from the window, love-come in, at last,
Inside the melancholy little house
We built to be so gay with. God is just.
King Francis may forgive me.
When I look up from painting,
The walls become illumined, brick from brick
Distinct instead of mortar, fierce bright gold,
That gold of his I did cement them with!
Let us but love each other. Must you go?
That cousin here again? he waits outside?

Oft at nights

eyes tired out,

Must see you you, and not with me? Those loans?

More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that? Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend ? While hand and eye and something of a heart

Are left to me, work's my ware, and what's it worth?
I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit

The grey remainder of the evening out,
Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly

How I could paint, were I but back in France,
One picture, just one more-the Virgin's face,
Not yours this time! I want you at my side
To hear them—that is, Michael Angelo-
Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.
Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend.
I take the subjects for his corridor,

Finish the portrait out of hand-there, there,
And throw him in another thing or two
If he demurs; the whole should prove enough
Το pay for this same cousin's freak. Beside,
What's better and what's all I care about,

Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff.

Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he, The cousin! what does he to please you more?

I am grown peaceful as old age to-night.
I regret little, I would change still less.
Since there my past life lies, why alter it?
The very wrong to Francis !—it is true

I took his coin, was tempted and complied,
And built this house and sinned, and all is said.
My father and my mother died of want.
Well, had I riches of my own? you see

How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot.
They were born poor,

lived poor, and poor they died:

And I have laboured somewhat in my time
And not been paid profusely. Some good son
Paint my two hundred pictures-let him try!

No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes,
You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night.
This must suffice me here. What would one have?
In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance—
Four great walls in the New Jerusalem

Meted on each side by the angel's reed
For Leonard, Rafael, Angelo and me
To cover-the three first without a wife,
While I have mine! So-still they overcome
Because there's still Lucrezia-as I choose.

Again the cousin's whistle! Go, my love.

SAUL.

I.

Said Abner, "At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,

Kiss my cheek, wish me well!" Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek.

And he, "Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent,

Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from

his tent

Thou return with the joyful assurance the king liveth

yet,

Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water

be wet.

For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of

three days,

Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer or of praise,

To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their

strife,

And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks back upon life.

II.

"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child, with His dew

On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue

Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no

wild heat

Were now raging to torture the desert!"

III.

Then I, as was meet,

Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on

my feet,

And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was unlooped;

I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I

stooped;

Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all withered and gone,

That extends to the second enclosure, I groped my

way on

Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I prayed,

And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not

afraid,

But spoke, "Here is David, thy servant!"

voice replied.

And no

At the first I saw nought but the blackness; but soon

I descried

A something more black than the blackness-the vast,

the upright

Main prop which sustains the pavilion: and slow into

sight

Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of

all:

Then a sunbeam, that burst thro' the tent-roof, showed Saul.

« AnteriorContinuar »