I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. 
I regret little, I would change still less. 
Since there my past life lies, why alter it? 
The very wrong to Francis!—­it is true
I took his coin, was tempted and complied,
And built this house and sinned, and all is said. 
My father and my mother died of want. 250
Well, had I riches of my own? you see
How one gets rich!  Let each one bear his lot. 
They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died: 
And I have labored somewhat in my time
And not been paid profusely.  Some good son
Paint my two hundred pictures—­let him try! 
No doubt, there’s something strikes a balance.  Yes,
You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night. 
This must suffice me here.  What would one have? 
In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance—­ 260
Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,
Meted on each side by the angel’s reed,
For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me
To cover—­the three first without a wife,
While I have mine!  So—­still they overcome
Because there’s still Lucrezia—­as I choose.

Again the Cousin’s whistle!  Go, my Love.

NOTES

“Andrea del Sarto.”  This monologue reveals, beside the personalities of both Andrea and Lucretia and the main incidents of their lives, the relations existing between Andrea’s character, his choice of a wife, and the peculiar quality of his art; the whole serving, also, to illustrate the picture on which the poem is based.  The gray tone that silvers the picture pervades the poem with an air of helpless, resigned melancholy, and sets forth the fatal quality of facile craftsmanship joined with a flaccid spirit. —­Mr. John Kenyon, Mrs. Browning’s cousin, asked Browning to get him a copy of the picture of Andrea and his wife in the Pitti Palace.  Browning, being unable to find one, wrote this poem describing it, instead.  Andrea (1486-1531), because his father was a tailor, was called del Sarto, also, il pittore senza errori, “the faultless painter.”

2.  Lucrezia:  di Baccio del Fede, a cap-maker’s widow, says Vasari, who ensnared Andrea “before her husband’s death, and who delighted in trapping the hearts of men.”

15.  Fiesole:  a hillside city on the Arno, three miles west of Florence.

93.  Morello:  the highest of the Apennine mountains north of Florence.

105.  The Urbinate:  Raphael Santi (1483-1520), so called because born
     at Urbino.

106.  Vasari:  painter and writer of the “Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Painters,” which supplied Browning with material for this poem and for “Fra Lippo.”

130.  Agnolo:  Michel Agnolo Buonarotti, painter, sculptor, and 1architect (1475-564).