me less!”
Wherefore I chose my portion.  If at whiles
  My heart sinks, as monotonous I paint
These endless cloisters and eternal aisles
  With the same series.  Virgin, Babe and Saint, 60
With the same cold calm beautiful regard—­
  At least no merchant traffics in my heart;
The sanctuary’s gloom at least shall ward
  Vain tongues from where my pictures stand apart;
Only prayer breaks the silence of the shrine
  While, blackening in the daily candle-smoke,
They moulder on the damp wall’s travertine,
  ’Mid echoes the light footstep never woke. 
So, die my pictures! surely, gently die! 
  O youth, men praise so—­holds their praise its worth? 70
Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry? 
  Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?

NOTES

“Pictor Ignotus” is a reverie characteristic of a monastic painter of the Renaissance who recognizes, in the genius of a youth whose pictures are praised, a gift akin to his own, but which he has never so exercised, spite of the joy such free human expression and recognition of his power would have given him, because he could not bear to submit his art to worldly contact.  So he has chosen to sink his name in unknown service to the Church, and to devote his fancy to pure and beautiful but cold and monotonous repetitions of sacred themes.  His gentle regret that his own pictures will moulder unvisited is half wonderment that the youth can endure the sullying of his work by secular fame.

67.  Travertine:  a white limestone, the name being a corruption of Tiburtinus, from Tibur , now Tivoli, near Rome, whence this stone comes.

FRA LIPPO LIPPI

1855

1 am poor brother Lippo, by your leave! 
You need not clap your torches to my face. 
Zooks, what’s to blame? you think you see a monk! 
What, ’tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,
And here you catch me at an alley’s end
Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar? 
The Carmine’s my cloister:  hunt it up,
Do—­harry out, if you must show your zeal,
Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,
And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, 10
Weke, weke, that’s crept to keep him company! 
Aha, you know your betters!  Then, you’ll take
Your hand away that’s fiddling on my throat,
And please to know me likewise.  Who am I? 
Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend
Three streets off—­he’s a certain . . . how d’ye call? 
Master—­a . . .  Cosimo of the Medici,
I’ the house that caps the corner.  Boh! you were best! 
Remember and tell me, the day you’re hanged,
How you affected such a gullet’s-gripe! 20
But you, sir, it concerns you that your knaves
Pick up a manner nor discredit you: