Old Pictures in Florence

I

The morn when first it thunders in March, The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say: As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch Of the villa-gate this warm March day,

No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled In the valley beneath where, white and wide And washed by the morning water-gold, Florence lay out on the mountain-side.

II

River and bridge and street and square Lay mine, as much at my beck and call, Through the live translucent bath of air, As the sights in a magic crystal ball. And of all I saw and of all I praised, The most to praise and the best to see Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised: But why did it more than startle me?

III

Giotto, how, with that soul of yours, Could you play me false who loved you so? Some slights if a certain heart endures Yet it feels, I would have your fellows know! I' faith, I perceive not why I should care To break a silence that suits them best, But the thing grows somewhat hard to bear When I find a Giotto join the rest.

IV

On the arch where olives overhead Print the blue sky with twig and leaf, (That sharp-curled leaf which they never shed) 'Twixt the aloes, I used to lean in chief, And mark through the winter afternoons, By a gift God grants me now and then, In the mild decline of those suns like moons, Who walked in Florence, besides her men.

V

They might chirp and chaffer, come and go For pleasure or profit, her men alive— My business was hardly with them, I trow, But with empty cells of the human hive; —With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch, The church's apsis, aisle or nave, Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch, Its face set full for the sun to shave.

VI

Wherever a fresco peels and drops, Wherever an outline weakens and wanes Till the latest life in the painting stops, Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains: One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick, Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster, —A lion who dies of an ass's kick, The wronged great soul of an ancient Master.

VII

For oh, this world and the wrong it does They are safe in heaven with their backs to it, The Michaels and Rafaels, you hum and buzz Round the works of, you of the little wit! Do their eyes contract to the earth's old scope, Now that they see God face to face, And have all attained to be poets, I hope? 'Tis their holiday now, in any case.

VIII

Much they reck of your praise and you! But the wronged great souls—can they be quit Of a world where their work is all to do, Where you style them, you of the little wit, Old Master This and Early the Other, Not dreaming that Old and New are fellows: A younger succeeds to an elder brother, Da Vincis derive in good time from Dellos.

IX

And here where your praise might yield returns, And a handsome word or two give help, Here, after your kind, the mastiff girns And the puppy pack of poodles yelp. What, not a word for Stefano there, Of brow once prominent and starry, Called Nature's Ape and the world's despair For his peerless painting? (See Vasari.)

X

There stands the Master. Study, my friends, What a man's work comes to! So he plans it, Performs it, perfects it, makes amends For the toiling and moiling, and then, sic transit! Happier the thrifty blind-folk labour, With upturned eye while the hand is busy, Not sidling a glance at the coin of their neighbour! 'Tis looking downward that makes one dizzy.

XI

"If you knew their work you would deal your dole." May I take upon me to instruct you? When Greek Art ran and reached the goal, Thus much had the world to boast in fructu— The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken, Which the actual generations garble, Was re-uttered, and Soul (which Limbs betoken) And Limbs (Soul informs) made new in marble.

XII

So, you saw yourself as you wished you were, As you might have been, as you cannot be; Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there: And grew content in your poor degree With your little power, by those statues' godhead, And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway, And your little grace, by their grace embodied, And your little date, by their forms that stay.

XIII

You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am? Even so, you will not sit like Theseus. You would prove a model? The Son of Priam Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use. You're wroth—can you slay your snake like Apollo? You're grieved—still Niobe's the grander! You live—there's the Racers' frieze to follow: You die—there's the dying Alexander.

XIV

So, testing your weakness by their strength, Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty, Measured by Art in your breadth and length, You learned—to submit is a mortal's duty. —When I say "you" 'tis the common soul, The collective, I mean: the race of Man That receives life in parts to live in a whole, And grow here according to God's clear plan.

XV

Growth came when, looking your last on them all, You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day And cried with a start—What if we so small Be greater and grander the while than they? Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature? In both, of such lower types are we Precisely because of our wider nature; For time, theirs—ours, for eternity.

XVI

To-day's brief passion limits their range; It seethes with the morrow for us and more. They are perfect—how else? they shall never change: We are faulty—why not? we have time in store. The Artificer's hand is not arrested With us; we are rough-hewn, nowise polished: They stand for our copy, and, once invested With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished.

XVII

'Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven— The better! What's come to perfection perishes. Things learned on earth, we shall practise in heaven: Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes. Thyself shalt afford the example, Giotto! Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish, Done at a stroke, was just (was it not?) "O!" Thy great Campanile is still to finish.

XVIII

Is it true that we are now, and shall be hereafter, But what and where depend on life's minute? Hails heavenly cheer or infernal laughter Our first step out of the gulf or in it? Shall Man, such step within his endeavour, Man's face, have no more play and action Than joy which is crystallized for ever, Or grief, an eternal petrifaction?

XIX

On which I conclude, that the early painters, To cries of "Greek Art and what more wish you?"— Replied, "To become now self-acquainters, "And paint man man, whatever the issue! "Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray, "New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters: "To bring the invisible full into play! "Let the visible go to the dogs—what matters?"

XX

Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and glory For daring so much, before they well did it. The first of the new, in our race's story, Beats the last of the old; 'tis no idle quiddit. The worthies began a revolution, Which if on earth you intend to acknowledge, Why, honour them now! (ends my allocution) Nor confer your degree when the folk leave college.

XXI

There's a fancy some lean to and others hate— That, when this life is ended, begins New work for the soul in another state, Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins: Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries, Repeat in large what they practised in small, Through life after life in unlimited series; Only the scale's to be changed, that's all.

XXII

Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen By the means of Evil that Good is best, And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene,— When our faith in the same has stood the test— Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, The uses of labour are surely done; There remaineth a rest for the people of God: And I have had troubles enough, for one.

XXIII

But at any rate I have loved the season Of Art's spring-birth so dim and dewy; My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan, My painter—who but Cimabue? Nor ever was man of them all indeed, From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlandaio, Could say that he missed my critic-meed. So, now to my special grievance—heigh ho!

XXIV

Their ghosts still stand, as I said before, Watching each fresco flaked and rasped, Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o'er: —No getting again what the church has grasped! The works on the wall must take their chance; "Works never conceded to England's thick clime!" (I hope they prefer their inheritance Of a bucketful of Italian quick-lime.)

XXV

When they go at length, with such a shaking Of heads o'er the old delusion, sadly Each master his way through the black streets taking, Where many a lost work breathes though badly— Why don't they bethink them of who has merited? Why not reveal, while their pictures dree Such doom, how a captive might be out-ferreted? Why is it they never remember me?

XXVI

Not that I expect the great Bigordi, Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose; Nor the wronged Lippino; and not a word I Say of a scrap of Fra Angelico's: But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi, To grant me a taste of your intonaco, Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye? Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?

XXVII

Could not the ghost with the close red cap, My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman, Save me a sample, give me the hap Of a muscular Christ that shows the draughtsman? No Virgin by him the somewhat petty, Of finical touch and tempera crumbly— Could not Alesso Baldovinetti Contribute so much, I ask him humbly?

XXVIII

Margheritone of Arezzo, With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?) Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion, Where in the foreground kneels the donor? If such remain, as is my conviction, The hoarding it does you but little honour.

XXIX

They pass; for them the panels may thrill, The tempera grow alive and tinglish; Their pictures are left to the mercies still Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English, Who, seeing mere money's worth in their prize, Will sell it to somebody calm as Zeno At naked High Art, and in ecstasies Before some clay-cold vile Carlino!

XXX

No matter for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it,— Oh, never! it shall not be counted true— That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover,— Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! and to whom?—to whom?

XXXI

I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito, (Or was it rather the Ognissanti?) Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe! Nay, I shall have it yet! Detur amanti! My Koh-i-noor-or (if that's a platitude) Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi's eye So, in anticipative gratitude, What if I take up my hope and prophesy?

XXXII

When the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing, To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard, We shall begin by way of rejoicing; None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge), Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer, Hunting Radetzky's soul like a partridge Over Morello with squib and cracker.

XXXIII

This time we'll shoot better game and bag 'em hot— No mere display at the stone of Dante, But a kind of sober Witanagemot (Ex: "Casa Guidi," quod videas ante) Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence, How Art may return that departed with her. Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine's, And bring us the days of Orgagna hither!

XXXIV

How we shall prologize, how we shall perorate, Utter fit things upon art and history, Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero rate, Make of the want of the age no mystery; Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras, Show—monarchy ever its uncouth cub licks Out of the bear's shape into Chimæra's, While Pure Art's birth is still the republic's.

XXXV

Then one shall propose in a speech (curt Tuscan, Expurgate and sober, with scarcely an "issimo,") To end now our half-told tale of Cambuscan, And turn the bell-tower's alt to altissimo: And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally, Shall soar up in gold full fifty braccia, Completing Florence, as Florence Italy.

XXXVI

Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold Is broken away, and the long-pent fire, Like the golden hope of the world, unbaffled Springs from its sleep, and up goes the spire While "God and the People" plain for its motto, Thence the new tricolour flaps at the sky? At least to foresee that glory of Giotto And Florence together, the first am I!