MICHAEL ANGELO. 
Then you will not want me, who am not witty,
And have no sense of mirth, and love not wine. 
I should be like a dead man at your banquet. 
Why should I seek this Frenchman, Rabelais? 
And wherefore go to hear Francesco Berni,
When I have Dante Alighieri here. 
The greatest of all poets?

FRA SEBASTIANO. 
                     And the dullest;
And only to be read in episodes. 
His day is past.  Petrarca is our poet.

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
Petrarca is for women and for lovers
And for those soft Abati, who delight
To wander down long garden walks in summer,
Tinkling their little sonnets all day long,
As lap dogs do their bells.

FRA SEBASTIANO. 
                        I love Petrarca. 
How sweetly of his absent love he sings
When journeying in the forest of Ardennes! 
“I seem to hear her, hearing the boughs and breezes
And leaves and birds lamenting, and the waters
Murmuring flee along the verdant herbage.”

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
Enough.  It is all seeming, and no being. 
If you would know how a man speaks in earnest,
Read here this passage, where St. Peter thunders
In Paradise against degenerate Popes
And the corruptions of the church, till all
The heaven about him blushes like a sunset. 
I beg you to take note of what he says
About the Papal seals, for that concerns
Your office and yourself.

FRA SEBASTIANO, reading. 
                 Is this the passage? 
“Nor I be made the figure of a seal
To privileges venal and mendacious,
Whereat I often redden and flash with fire!”—­
That is not poetry.

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
                    What is it, then?

FRA SEBASTIANO. 
Vituperation; gall that might have spirited
From Aretino’s pen.

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
                  Name not that man! 
A profligate, whom your Francesco Berni
Describes as having one foot in the brothel
And the other in the hospital; who lives
By flattering or maligning, as best serves
His purpose at the time.  He writes to me
With easy arrogance of my Last Judgment,
In such familiar tone that one would say
The great event already had occurred,
And he was present, and from observation
Informed me how the picture should be painted.

FRA SEBASTIANO. 
What unassuming, unobtrusive men
These critics are!  Now, to have Aretino
Aiming his shafts at you brings back to mind
The Gascon archers in the square of Milan,
Shooting their arrows at Duke Sforza’s statue,
By Leonardo, and the foolish rabble
Of envious Florentines, that at your David
Threw stones at night.  But Aretino praised you.

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
His praises were ironical.  He knows
How to use words as weapons, and to wound
While seeming to defend.  But look, Bastiano,
See how the setting sun lights up that picture!