Michael Angelo (Longfellow)/Part III/The Dead Christ

MICHAEL ANGELO'S studio. MICHAEL ANGELO, with a light, working upon the Dead Christ. Midnight.

MICHAEL ANGELO. O Death, why is it I cannot portray Thy form and features? Do I stand too near thee? Or dost thou hold my hand, and draw me back, As being thy disciple, not thy master? Let him who knows not what old age is like Have patience till it comes, and he will know. I once had skill to fashion Life and Death And Sleep, which is the counterfeit of Death; And I remember what Giovanni Strozzi Wrote underneath my statue of the Night In San Lorenzo, ah, so long ago!

Grateful to me is sleep! More grateful now Than it was then; for all my friends are dead; And she is dead, the noblest of them all. I saw her face, when the great sculptor Death, Whom men should call Divine, had at a blow Stricken her into marble; and I kissed Her cold white hand. What was it held me back From kissing her fair forehead, and those lips, Those dead, dumb lips? Grateful to me is sleep!

Enter GIORGIO VASARI.

GIORGIO. Good-evening, or good-morning, for I know not Which of the two it is.

MICHAEL ANGELO. How came you in?

GIORGIO. Why, by the door, as all men do.

MICHAEL ANGELO. Ascanio Must have forgotten to bolt it.

GIORGIO. Probably. Am I a spirit, or so like a spirit, That I could slip through bolted door or window? As I was passing down the street, I saw A glimmer of light, and heard the well-known chink Of chisel upon marble. So I entered, To see what keeps you from your bed so late.

MICHAEL ANGELO, coming forward with the lamp. You have been revelling with your boon companions, Giorgio Vasari, and you come to me At an untimely hour.

GIORGIO. The Pope hath sent me. His Holiness desires to see again The drawing you once showed him of the dome Of the Basilica.

MICHAEL ANGELO. We will look for it.

GIORGIO. What is the marble group that glimmers there Behind you?

MICHAEL ANGELO. Nothing, and yet everything,-- As one may take it. It is my own tomb, That I am building.

GIORGIO. Do not hide it from me. By our long friendship and the love I bear you, Refuse me not!

MICHAEL ANGELO, letting fall the lamp. Life hath become to me An empty theatre,--its lights extinguished, The music silent, and the actors gone; And I alone sit musing on the scenes That once have been. I am so old that Death Oft plucks me by the cloak, to come with him And some day, like this lamp, shall I fall down, And my last spark of life will be extinguished. Ah me! ah me! what darkness of despair! So near to death, and yet so far from God!