Hail to your purlieus,
All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
      Swallows and curlews: 
Here’s the top-peak; the multitude below
      Live, for they can, there: 
This man decided not to Live, but Know—­
      Bury this man there? 140
Here—­here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
      Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go!  Let joy break with the storm,
      Peace let the dew send! 
Lofty designs must close in like effects: 
      Loftily lying,
Leave him—­still loftier than the world suspects,
      Living and dying.

* * * * *

ANDREA DEL SARTO

(CALLED “THE FAULTLESS PAINTER”)

But do not let us quarrel any more,
No, my Lucrezia! bear with me for once: 
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. 
You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? 
I’ll work then for your friend’s friend, never fear. 
Treat his own subject after his own way,
Fix his own time, accept too his own price,
And shut the money into this small hand
When next it takes mine.  Will it? tenderly? 
Oh, I’ll content him,—­but to-morrow, Love! 10
I often am much wearier than you think,
This evening more than usual:  and it seems
As if—­forgive now—­should you let me sit
Here by the window, with your hand in mine,
And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole, deg. deg.15
Both of one mind, as married people use,
Quietly, quietly the evening through,
I might get up to-morrow to my work
Cheerful and fresh as ever.  Let us try. 
To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this! 20
Your soft hand is a woman of itself,
And mine the man’s bared breast she curls inside. 
Don’t count the time lost, neither; you must serve
For each of the five pictures we require: 
It saves a model.  So! keep looking so—­
My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds! 
—­How could you ever prick those perfect ears,
Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet—­
My face, my moon, my everybody’s moon. 
Which everybody looks on and calls his, 30
And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,
While she looks—­no one’s:  very dear, no less. 
You smile? why, there’s my picture ready made,
There’s what we painters call our harmony! 
A common grayness silvers everything,—­
All in a twilight, you and I alike
—­You, at the point of your first pride in me
(That’s gone, you know)—­but I, at every point;
My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down
To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. 40
There’s the bell clinking from the chapel-top;
That length of convent-wall across the way