I could count twenty such
     On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
     Who strive—­you don’t know how the others strive
     To paint a little thing like that you smeared
     Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,—­
     Yet do much less, so much less, Some One says,
     (I know his name, no matter)—­so much less! 
     Well, less is more, Lucrezia:  I am judged. 
     There burns a truer light of God in them,
     In their vexed, beating, stuffed, and stopped-up brain,
     Heart, or whate’er else, than goes on to prompt
     This low-pulsed forthright craftsman’s hand of mine. 
     Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
     Reach many a time a heaven that’s shut to me,
     Enter and take their place there sure enough,
     Though they come back and cannot tell the world. 
     My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here. 
     The sudden blood of these men! at a word—­
     Praise them, it boils; or blame them, it boils too. 
     I, painting from myself and to thyself,
     Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blame
     Or their praise either.  Somebody remarks
     Morello’s outline there is wrongly traced,
     His hue mistaken:  what of that? or else,
     Rightly traced and well ordered:  what of that? 
     Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? 
     Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
     Or what’s a heaven for?  All is silver-gray,
     Placid and perfect with my art:  the worse! 
     I know both what I want and what might gain;
     And yet how profitless to know, to sigh
     “Had I been two, another and myself,
     Our head would have o’erlooked the world” No doubt. 
     Yonder’s a work now, of that famous youth
     The Urbinate who died five years ago. 
     (’Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.)
     Well, I can fancy how he did it all,
     Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,
     Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,
     Above and through his art—­for it gives way: 
     That arm is wrongly put—­and there again—­
     A fault to pardon in the drawing’s lines,
     Its body, so to speak; its soul is right;
     He meant right—­that, a child may understand. 
     Still, what an arm! and I could alter it: 
     But all the play, the insight, and the stretch—­
     Out of me, out of me!  And wherefore out? 
     Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul,
     We might have risen to Rafael, I and you. 
     Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think—­
     More than I merit, yes, by many times. 
     But had you—­oh, with the same perfect brow,
     And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth
     And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird
     The fowler’s pipe, and follows to the snare—­
     Had you, with these, these same, but brought a mind!