Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/93

Rh he often falls into the language of less tranquil affections; while some of them have the colour of penitence, as from a wanderer returning home. He who spoke so decisively of the supremacy in the imaginative world of the unveiled human form had not been always a mere Platonic lover. Vague and wayward his loves may have been; but they partook of the strength of his nature, and sometimes would by no means become music, so that the comely order of his days was quite put out; par che amaro ogni mio dolce io senta.

But his genius is in harmony with itself; and just as in the products of his art we find resources of sweetness within their exceeding strength, so in his own story also, bitter as the ordinary sense of it may be, there are select pages shut in among the rest, pages one might easily turn over too lightly, but which yet sweeten the whole volume. The interest of Michelangelo's poems is that they make us spectators of this struggle; the struggle of a strong nature to adorn and attune itself; the struggle of a desolating passion, which yearns to be resigned and sweet and pensive, as Dante's was. It is a consequence of the occasional and informal character of his poetry that it brings us nearer to himself, his own mind and temper, than any work done merely to support a literary reputation could