Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893.
Michael Angelo: A FragmentPart Second. V. Palazzo Belvedere
Your City of Silence floating in the sea,
And come to us in Rome.
But I have come too late. I should have seen
Rome in my youth, when all my mind was open
To new impressions. Our Vasari here
Leads me about, a blind man, groping darkly
Among the marvels of the past. I touch them,
But do not see them.
That one might walk barefooted here from Venice
But to see once, and then to die content.
Oppress me with their gloom. I feel as one
Who in the twilight stumbles among tombs,
And cannot read the inscriptions carved upon them.
With desolation, and it has become
No more a pain to me, but a delight.
And the sea-mist, with sunshine interwoven
Like cloth of gold; must have beneath my windows
The laughter of the waves, and at my door
Their pattering footsteps, or I am not happy.
Paved with red basalt of the Paduan hills.
Tell me of art in Venice. Three great names,
Giorgione, Titian, and the Tintoretto,
Illustrate your Venetian school, and send
A challenge to the world. The first is dead,
But Tintoretto lives.
Sudden and splendid, as the lightning paints
The cloudy vault of heaven.
Above his door the arrogant inscription
That once was painted there,—“The color of Titian,
With the design of Michael Angelo”?
And does no harm to any but himself.
Perhaps he has grown wiser.
Are gone, who is there that remains behind
To seize the pencil falling from your fingers?
To clutch at such a prize, and hardly wait
For death to loose your grasp,—a hundred of them:
Schiavone, Bonifazio, Campagnola,
Moretto, and Moroni; who can count them,
Or measure their ambition?
The generation that comes after us
Will have far other thoughts than ours. Our ruins
Will serve to build their palaces or tombs.
They will possess the world that we think ours,
And fashion it far otherwise.
Your son Orazio and your nephew Marco
Mentioned with honor.
But time will show. There is a youth in Venice,
One Paul Cagliari, called the Veronese,
Still a mere stripling, but of such rare promise
That we must guard our laurels, or may lose them.
That, when we die, with us all art will die.
’T is but a fancy. Nature will provide
Others to take our places. I rejoice
To see the young spring forward in the race,
Eager as we were, and as full of hope
And the sublime audacity of youth.
Goes on the same. Among the myriads
Of men that live, or have lived, or shall live,
What is a single life, or thine or mine,
That we should think all nature would stand still
If we were gone? We must make room for others.
Of Danaë, of which I hear such praise.
To lock such beauty in a brazen tower,
And hide it from all eyes.
Was beautiful.
And saw the showery Jove from high Olympus
Descend in all his splendor.
Such words are full of sweetness.
These golden hues from your Venetian sunsets.
On the lagoons, or the broad Adriatic.
Nature reveals herself in all our arts.
The pavements and the palaces of cities
Hint at the nature of the neighboring hills.
Red lavas from the Euganean quarries
Of Padua pave your streets; your palaces
Are the white stones of Istria, and gleam
Reflected in your waters and your pictures.
And thus the works of every artist show
Something of his surroundings and his habits.
The uttermost that can be reached by color
Is here accomplished. Warmth and light and softness
Mingle together. Never yet was flesh
Painted by hand of artist, dead or living,
With such divine perfection.
For so much praise from you, who are a master;
While mostly those who praise and those who blame
Know nothing of the matter, so that mainly
Their censure sounds like praise, their praise like censure.
Fascinates me the more that in myself
The gift is wanting. I am not a painter.
Not one alone; and therefore I may venture
To put a question to you.
Have made me umpire in dispute between them
Which is the greater of the sister arts,
Painting or sculpture. Solve for me the doubt.
And whosoever would attain to it,
Whichever path he take, will find that goal
Equally hard to reach.
But you evade the question.
In presence of this picture, I concede
That painting has attained its uttermost;
But in the presence of my sculptured figures
I feel that my conception soars beyond
All limit I have reached.
That I account that painting as the best
Which most resembles sculpture. Here before us
We have the proof. Behold these rounded limbs!
How from the canvas they detach themselves,
Till they deceive the eye, and one would say,
It is a statue with a screen behind it!
Seem to me idle.
And now, Maestro, I will say once more
How admirable I esteem your work,
And leave you, without further interruption.
But half as much of drawing as of color,
They would indeed work miracles in art,
And the world see what it hath never seen.