Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893.
Michael Angelo: A FragmentPart Third. VI. Michael Angelo’s Studio
My strength begins to fail me.
That is impossible. Do I not see you
Attack the marble blocks with the same fury
As twenty years ago?
I must have learned it early from my nurse
At Setignano, the stone-mason’s wife;
For the first sounds I heard were of the chisel
Chipping away the stone.
You strike fire with your chisel.
The marble is too hard.
That Topolino sent you from Carrara.
He is a judge of marble.
With it he sent me something of his making,—
A Mercury, with long body and short legs,
As if by any possibility
A messenger of the gods could have short legs.
It was no more like Mercury than you are,
But rather like those little plaster figures
That peddlers hawk about the villages
As images of saints. But luckily
For Topolino, there are many people
Who see no difference between what is best
And what is only good, or not even good;
So that poor artists stand in their esteem
On the same level with the best, or higher.
All men are not born artists, nor will labor
E’er make them artists.
Than Emperors, or Popes, or Cardinals.
One must be chosen for it. I have been
Your color-grinder six and twenty years,
And am not yet an artist.
That see not; but in every block of marble
I see a statue,—see it as distinctly
As if it stood before me shaped and perfect
In attitude and action. I have only
To hew away the stone walls that imprison
The lovely apparition, and reveal it
To other eyes as mine already see it.
But I grow old and weak. What wilt thou do
When I am dead, Urbino?
I must then serve another master.
Bitter is servitude at best. Already
So many years hast thou been serving me;
But rather as a friend than as a servant.
We have grown old together. Dost thou think
So meanly of this Michael Angelo
As to imagine he would let thee serve,
When he is free from service? Take this purse,
Two thousand crowns in gold.
A beggar in a hospital.
That I am undertaking. The last garment
That men will make for me will have no pockets.
Thou hast served Michael Angelo. Remember,
Henceforward thou shalt serve no other master.