You and I would rather read that volume
     (Taken to his beating bosom by it),
     Lean and list the bosom-beats of Raphael,
     Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas—­
     Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno,
     Her, that visits Florence in a vision,
     Her, that’s left with lilies in the Louvre—­
     Seen by us and all the world in circle.

     You and I will never read that volume. 
     Guido Reni like his own eye’s apple
     Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it. 
     Guido Reni dying, all Bologna
     Cried, and the world cried too, “Ours the treasure!”
     Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

     Dante once prepared to paint an angel: 
     Whom to please?  You whisper “Beatrice.” 
     While he mused and traced it and retraced it,
     (Peradventure with a pen corroded
     Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for
     When, his left hand i’ the hair o’ the wicked,
     Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,
     Bit into the live man’s flesh for parchment,
     Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
     Let the wretch go festering through Florence)—­
     Dante, who loved well because he hated,
     Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
     Dante standing, studying his angel—­
     In there broke the folk of his Inferno. 
     Says he—­“Certain people of importance”
     (Such he gave his daily dreadful line to)
     “Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet.” 
     Says the poet—­“Then I stopped my painting.”

     You and I would rather see that angel
     Painted by the tenderness of Dante—­
     Would we not?—­than read a fresh Inferno.

     You and I will never see that picture. 
     While he mused on love and Beatrice,
     While he softened o’er his outlined angel,
     In they broke, those “people of importance”;
     We and Bice bear the loss forever.

     What of Rafael’s sonnets, Dante’s picture? 
     This:  no artist lives and loves, that longs not
     Once, and only once, and for one only,
     (Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language
     Fit and fair and simple and sufficient—­
     Using nature that’s an art to others,
     Not, this one time, art that’s turned his nature. 
     Ay, of all the artists living, loving,
     None but would forego his proper dowry. 
     Does he paint? he fain would write a poem: 
     Does he write? he fain would paint a picture: 
     Put to proof art alien to the artist’s,
     Once, and only once, and for one only,
     So to be the man and leave the artist,
     Gain the man’s joy, miss the artist’s sorrow.