Michael Angelo (Longfellow)/Part III/In the Coliseum

MICHAEL ANGELO and TOMASO DE CAVALIERI

CAVALIERI. What have you here alone, Messer Michele?

MICHAEL ANGELO. I come to learn.

CAVALIERI. You are already master, And teach all other men.

MICHAEL ANGELO. Nay, I know nothing; Not even my own ignorance, as some Philosopher hath said. I am a schoolboy Who hath not learned his lesson, and who stands Ashamed and silent in the awful presence Of the great master of antiquity Who built these walls cyclopean.

CAVALIERI. Gaudentius His name was, I remember. His reward Was to be thrown alive to the wild beasts Here where we now are standing.

MICHAEL ANGELO. Idle tales.

CAVALIERI. But you are greater than Gaudentius was, And your work nobler.

MICHAEL ANGELO. Silence, I beseech you.

CAVALIERI. Tradition says that fifteen thousand men Were toiling for ten years incessantly Upon this amphitheatre.

MICHAEL ANGELO. Behold How wonderful it is! The queen of flowers, The marble rose of Rome! Its petals torn By wind and rain of thrice five hundred years; Its mossy sheath half rent away, and sold To ornament our palaces and churches, Or to be trodden under feet of man Upon the Tiber's bank; yet what remains Still opening its fair bosom to the sun, And to the constellations that at night Hang poised above it like a swarm of bees.

CAVALIERI. The rose of Rome, but not of Paradise; Not the white rose our Tuscan poet saw, With saints for petals. When this rose was perfect Its hundred thousand petals were not Saints, But senators in their Thessalian caps, And all the roaring populace of Rome; And even an Empress and the Vestal Virgins, Who came to see the gladiators die, Could not give sweetness to a rose like this.

MICHAEL ANGELO. I spake not of its uses, but its beauty.

CAVALIERI. The sand beneath our feet is saturate With blood of martyrs; and these rifted stones Are awful witnesses against a people Whose pleasure was the pain of dying men.

MICHAEL ANGELO. Tomaso Cavalieri, on my word, You should have been a preacher, not a painter! Think you that I approve such cruelties, Because I marvel at the architects Who built these walls, and curved these noble arches? Oh, I am put to shame, when I consider How mean our work is, when compared with theirs! Look at these walls about us and above us! They have been shaken by earthquake; have been made A fortress, and been battered by long sieges; The iron clamps, that held the stones together, Have been wrenched from them; but they stand erect And firm, as if they had been hewn and hollowed Out of the solid rock, and were a part Of the foundations of the world itself.

CAVALIERI. Your work, I say again, is nobler work, In so far as its end and aim are nobler; And this is but a ruin, like the rest. Its vaulted passages are made the caverns Of robbers, and are haunted by the ghosts Of murdered men.

MICHAEL ANGELO. A thousand wild flowers bloom From every chink, and the birds build their nests Among the ruined arches, and suggest New thoughts of beauty to the architect, Now let us climb the broken stairs that lead Into the corridors above, and study The marvel and the mystery of that art In which I am a pupil, not a master. All things must have an end; the world itself Must have an end, as in a dream I saw it. There came a great hand out of heaven, and touched The earth, and stopped it in its course. The seas Leaped, a vast cataract, into the abyss; The forests and the fields slid off, and floated Like wooded islands in the air. The dead Were hurled forth from their sepulchres; the living Were mingled with them, and themselves were dead,-- All being dead; and the fair, shining cities Dropped out like jewels from a broken crown. Naught but the core of the great globe remained, A skeleton of stone. And over it The wrack of matter drifted like a cloud, And then recoiled upon itself, and fell Back on the empty world, that with the weight Reeled, staggered, righted, and then headlong plunged Into the darkness, as a ship, when struck By a great sea, throws off the waves at first On either side, then settles and goes down Into the dark abyss, with her dead crew.

CAVALIERI. But the earth does not move.

MICHAEL ANGELO. Who knows? who knowst? There are great truths that pitch their shining tents Outside our walls, and though but dimly seen In the gray dawn, they will be manifest When the light widens into perfect day. A certain man, Copernicus by name, Sometime professor here in Rome, has whispered It is the earth, and not the sun, that moves. What I beheld was only in a dream, Yet dreams sometimes anticipate events, Being unsubstantial images of things As yet unseen.