Dante deg. once prepared to paint an angel:  deg.32
Whom to please?  You whisper “Beatrice.” deg. deg.33
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, deg. deg.37
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, 40
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. deg. deg.45
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.”

VI

You and I would rather see that angel, 50
Painted by the tenderness of Dante,
Would we not?—­than read a fresh Inferno.

VII

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 deg. bear the loss forever. deg.57

VIII

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, 60
(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, 70
So to be the man and leave the artist,
Gain the man’s joy, miss the artist’s sorrow.

IX

Wherefore?  Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement! 
He who smites the rock deg. and spreads the water, deg.74
Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,
Even he, the minute makes immortal,
Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute,
Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing. 
While he smites, how can he but remember,
So he smote before, in such a peril,