To speak adequately of these form-poems would be quite impossible.  Buonarroti seems to have intended to prove by them that the human body has a language, inexhaustible in symbolism—­every limb, every feature, and every attitude being a word full of significance to those who comprehend, just as music is a language whereof each note and chord and phrase has correspondence with the spiritual world.  It may be presumptuous after this fashion to interpret the design of him who called into existence the heroic population of the Sistine.  Yet Michael Angelo has written lines which in some measure justify the reading.  This is how he closes one of his finest sonnets to Vittoria Colonna: 

    Nor hath God deigned to show Himself elsewhere
    More clearly than in human forms sublime;
    Which, since they image Him, compel my love.

Therefore to him a well-shaped hand, or throat, or head, a neck superbly poised on an athletic chest, the sway of the trunk above the hips, the starting of the muscles on the flank, the tendons of the ankle, the outline of the shoulder when the arm is raised, the backward bending of the loins, the curves of a woman’s breast, the contours of a body careless in repose or strained for action, were all words pregnant with profoundest meaning, whereby fit utterance might be given to the thoughts that raise man near to God.  But, it may be asked, what poems of action as well as feeling are to be expressed in this form-language?  The answer is simple.  Paint or carve the body of a man, and, as you do it nobly, you will give the measure of both highest thought and most impassioned deed.  This is the key to Michael Angelo’s art.  He cared but little for inanimate nature.  The landscapes of Italy, so eloquent in their sublimity and beauty, were apparently a blank to him.  His world was the world of ideas, taking visible form, incarnating themselves in man.  One language the master had to serve him in all need—­the language of plastic human form; but it was to him a tongue as rich in its variety of accent and of intonation as Beethoven’s harmonies.

In the Sistine Chapel, where plastic art is so supreme, we are bound to ask the further question.  What was the difference between Michael Angelo and a Greek?  The Parthenon with its processions of youths and maidens, its gods and heroes, rejoicing in their strength, and robed with raiment that revealed their living form, made up a symphony of meaning as full as this of Michael Angelo, and far more radiant.  The Greek sculptor embraced humanity in his work no less comprehensively than the Italian; and what he had to say was said more plainly in the speech they both could use.  But between Pheidias and Michael Angelo lay Christianity, the travail of the world through twenty centuries.  Clear as morning, and calm in the unconsciousness of beauty, are those heroes of the youth of Hellas.  All is grace, repose, strength shown but not asserted.  Michael Angelo’s Sibyls and Prophets are old