Ah me!  I wander tired, and know not whither: 
  I fear to sight my goal, the years gone by
  Point it too plain; nor will closed eyes avail. 
  Now Time hath changed and gnawed this mortal veil,
  Death and the soul in conflict strive together
  About my future fate that looms so nigh. 
  Unless my judgment greatly goes awry,
  Which God in mercy grant, I can but see
  Eternal penalty
  Waiting my wasted will, my misused mind,
  And know not, Lord, where health and hope to find._

After reading these lamentations, it is well to remember that Michelangelo at times indulged a sense of humour.  As examples of his lighter vein, we might allude to the sonnet on the Sistine and the capitolo in answer to Francesco Berni, written in the name of Fra Sebastiano.  Sometimes his satire becomes malignant, as in the sonnet against the people of Pistoja, which breathes the spirit of Dantesque invective.  Sometimes the fierceness of it is turned against himself, as in the capitolo upon old age and its infirmities.  The grotesqueness of this lurid descant on senility and death is marked by something rather Teutonic than Italian, a “Danse Macabre” intensity of loathing; and it winds up with the bitter reflections, peculiar to him in his latest years, upon the vanity of art.  “My much-prized art, on which I relied and which brought me fame, has now reduced me to this.  I am poor and old, the slave of others.  To the dogs I must go, unless I die quickly.”

A proper conclusion to this chapter may be borrowed from the peroration of Varchi’s discourse upon the philosophical love-poetry of Michelangelo.  This time he chooses for his text the second of those sonnets (No. lii.) which caused the poet’s grand-nephew so much perplexity, inducing him to alter the word amici in the last line into animi.  It runs as follows:—­

  I saw no mortal beauty with these eyes
    When perfect peace in thy fair eyes I found;
    But far within, where all is holy ground,
    My soul felt Love, her comrade of the skies: 
  For she was born with God in Paradise;
    Else should we still to transient love be bound;
    But, finding these so false, we pass beyond
    Unto the Love of loves that never dies. 
  Nay, things that die cannot assuage the thirst
    Of souls undying; nor Eternity
    Serves Time, where all must fade that flourisheth
  Sense is not love, but lawlessness accurst: 
    This kills the soul; while our love lifts on high
    Our friends on earth—­higher in heaven through death._