Poems

The blackbirds jangle in the tops

Of hoary-antlered sycamores;

The timorous killdee starts and stops

Among the drift-wood on the shores.

Below, the bridge––a noonday fear

Of dust and shadow shot with sun––

Stretches its gloom from pier to pier,

Far unto alien coasts unknown.

And on those alien coasts, above,

Where silver ripples break the stream’s

Long blue, from some roof-sheltering grove

A hidden parrot scolds and screams.

Ah, nothing, nothing! Commonest things:

A touch, a glimpse, a sound, a breath––

It is a song the oriole sings––

And all the rest belongs to death.

But oriole, my oriole,

Were some bright seraph sent from bliss

With songs of heaven to win my soul

From simple memories such as this,

What could he tell to tempt my ear

From you? What high thing could there be,

So tenderly and sweetly dear

As my lost boyhood is to me?

Cowled and sandalled and beaded, a plump and pensive procession;

And in my day their cells were barracks for Austrian soldiers,

Who in their turn have followed the Augustinian Friars.

As to the frescos, little remained of work once so perfect.

Summer and winter weather of some three cycles had wasted;

Plaster had fallen, and left unsightly blotches of ruin;

Wanton and stupid neglect had done its worst to the pictures:

Yet to the sympathetic and reverent eye was apparent––

Where the careless glance but found, in expanses of plaster,

Touches of incoherent color and lines interrupted––

Somewhat still of the life of surpassing splendor and glory

Filling the frescos once; and here and there was a figure,

Standing apart, and out from the common decay and confusion,

Flushed with immortal youth and ineffaceable beauty,

Such as that figure of Eve in pathetic expulsion from Eden,

Taking––the tourist remembers––the wrath of Heaven al fresco,

As is her well-known custom in thousands of acres of canvas.

III.

I could make out the much-bepainted Biblical subjects,

When I had patience enough: The Temptation, of course, and Expulsion;

Cain killing Abel, his Brother––the merest fragment of murder;

Noah’s Debauch––the trunk of the sea-faring patriarch naked,

And the garment, borne backward to cover it, fearfully tattered;

Abraham offering Isaac––no visible Isaac, and only

Abraham’s lifted knife held back by the hovering angel;

Martyrdom of Saint Stephen––a part of the figure of Stephen;

And the Conversion of Paul––the greaves on the leg of a soldier

Held across the back of a prostrate horse by the stirrup;

But when I looked at the face of that tearful and beauteous figure,––

Eve in the fresco there, and, in Venice of old, Violante,

As I must fain believe (the lovely daughter of Palma,

Who was her father’s Saint Barbara, and was the Bella of Titian),––

Such a meaning and life shone forth from its animate presence

As could restore those vague and ineffectual pictures,

With their pristine colors, and fill them with light and with movement.

Nay, sometimes it could blind me to all the present about me,

Till I beheld no more the sausage-legged Austrian soldiers,

Where they stood on guard beside one door of the Convent,

Nor the sentinel beggars that watched the approach to the other;

Neither the bigolanti, the broad-backed Friulan maidens,

Drawing the water with clatter and splashing, and laughter and gossip,

Out of the carven well in the midst of the court of the Convent––

No, not even the one with the mole on her cheek and the sidelong

Look, as she ambled forth with her buckets of bronze at her shoulder,

Swinging upon the yoke to and fro, a-drip and a-glimmer.

All in an instant was changed, and once more the cloister was peopled

By the serene monks of old, and against walls of the cloisters,

“She, and forever she! Is it come to be my perdition?

Shall I, then, never more make the face of a beautiful woman

But it must take her divine, accursèd beauty upon it,

And, when I finish my work, stand forth her visible presence?

Ah! I could take this sword and strike it into her bosom!

Though I believe my own heart’s blood would stream from the painting,

So much I love her! Yes, that look is marvellous like you,

Wandering, tender––such as I’d give my salvation to win you

Once to bend upon me! But I knew myself better than make you,

Lest I should play the fool about you here before people,

Helpless to turn away from your violet eyes, Violante,

That have turned all my life to a vision of madness.” The painter

Here unto speech betraying the thoughts he had silently pondered,

“Visions, visions, my son?” said a gray old friar who listened,

Seated there in the sun, with his eye on the work of the painter

Fishily fixed, while the master blasphemed behind his mustaches.

“Much have I envied your Art, who vouchsafeth to those who adore her

Visions of heavenly splendor denied to fastings and vigils.

I have spent days and nights of faint and painful devotion,

Scourged myself almost to death, without one glimpse of the glory

Which your touch has revealed in the face of that heavenly maiden.

Pleasure me to repeat what it was you were saying of visions:

Fain would I know how they come to you, though I never see them,

And in my thickness of hearing I fear some words have escaped me.”

Then, while the painter glared on the lifted face of the friar,

Baleful, breathless, bewildered, fiercer than noon in the dog-days,

Round the circle of pupils there ran a tittering murmur;

From the lips to the ears of those nameless Beppis and Gigis

Buzzed the stinging whisper: “Let’s hear Pordenone’s confession.”

Well they knew the master’s luckless love, and whose portrait

He had unconsciously painted there, and guessed that his visions

Scarcely were those conceived by the friar, who constantly blundered

Round the painter at work, mistaking every subject––

Noah’s drunken Debauch for the Stoning of Stephen the Martyr,

And the Conversion of Paul for the Flight into Egypt; forever

Putting his hand to his ear and shouting, “Speak louder, I pray you!”

So they waited now, in silent, amused expectation,

Till Pordenone’s angry scorn should gather to bursting.

Long the painter gazed in furious silence, then slowly

Uttered a kind of moan, and turned again to his labor.

Tears gathered into his eyes, of mortification and pathos,

And when the dull old monk, who forgot, while he waited the answer,

Visions and painter, and all, had maundered away in his error,

Pordenone half envied the imbecile peace of his bosom;

“For in my own,” he mused, “is such a combat of devils,

That I believe torpid age or stupid youth would be better

Than this manhood of mine that has climbed aloft to discover

Heights which I never can reach, and bright on the pinnacle standing

In the unfading light, my rival crowned victor above me.

If I could hint what I feel, what forever escapes from my pencil,

All after-time should know my will was not less than my failure,

Nor should any one dare remember me merely in pity.

All should read my sorrows and do my discomfiture homage,

Saying: ‘Not meanly at any time this painter meant or endeavored;

His was the anguish of one who falls short of the highest achievement,

Conscious of doing his utmost, and knowing how vast his defeat is.

Life, if he would, might have had some second guerdon to give him,

But he would only the first; and behold! Let us honor

Grief such as his must have been; no other sorrow can match it!

There are certainly some things here that are nobly imagined:

Look! here is masterly power in this play of light, and these shadows

Boldly are massed; and what color! One can well understand Buonarotti

Saying the sight of his Curtius was worth the whole journey from Florence.

Here is a man at least never less than his work; you can feel it

As you can feel in Titian’s the painter’s inferior spirit.

He and this Pordenone, you know, were rivals; and Titian

Knew how to paint to the popular humor, and spared not

Foul means or fair (his way with rivals) to crush Pordenone,

Who with an equal chance’––

“Alas, if the whole world should tell me

I was his equal in art, and the lie could save me from torment,

So must I be lost, for my soul could never believe it!

Nay, let my envy snarl as fierce as it will at his glory,

Still, when I look on his work, my soul makes obeisance within me,

Humbling itself before the touch that shall never be equalled.”

He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence,

And Pordenone was roused from these thoughts anon by the sudden

Hush that had fallen upon the garrulous group of his pupils;

And ere he turned half-way with instinctive looks of inquiry,

He was already warned, with a shock at the heart, of a presence

Long attended, not feared; and he laid one hand on his sword-hilt,

Seizing the sheath with the other hand, that the pallet had dropped from.

Then he fronted Titian, who stood with his arms lightly folded,

And with a curious smile, half of sarcasm, half of compassion,

Bent on th’ embattled painter, cried: “Your slave, Messere Antonio!

What good friend has played this bitter jest with your humor?

As I beheld you just now full-armed with your pencil and palette,

I was half awed by your might; but these sorry trappings of bravo

Make me believe you less fit to be the rival of Titian,

Here in the peaceful calm of our well-ordered city of Venice,

Than to take service under some Spanish lordling at Naples,

Needy in blades for work that can not wait for the poison.”

Pordenone flushed with anger and shame to be taken

At an unguarded point; but he answered with scornful defiance:

“Oh, you are come, I see, with the favorite weapon of Titian,

And you would make a battle of words. If you care for my counsel,

Listen to me: I say you are skilfuller far in my absence,

And your tongue can inflict a keener and deadlier mischief

When it is dipped in poisonous lies, and wielded in secret.”

True or not, ’tis well found.” Then looking around on the frescos:

“Good, very good indeed! Your breadth and richness and softness

No man living surpasses; those heads are truly majestic.

Yes, Buonarotti was right, when he said that to look at your Curtius

Richly repaid him the trouble and cost of a journey from Florence.

Surely the world shall know you the first of painters in fresco!

Well? You will not strike me unarmed? This was hardly expected

By the good people that taught you to think our rivalry blood-red.

Let us be friends, Pordenone!”

“Be patron and patronized, rather;

Nay, if you spoke your whole mind out, be assassin and victim.

Could the life beat again in the broken heart of Giorgione,

He might tell us, I think, something pleasant of friendship with Titian.”

Suddenly over the shoulder of Titian peered an ironical visage,

Smiling, malignly intent––the leer of the scurrilous poet:

“What have we here! More Magdalens yet of the painter’s acquaintance?

Ah––!”

The words had scarce left his lips, when the painter

Rushed upon him, and clutching his throat, thrust him backward and held him

Over the scaffolding’s edge in air, and straightway had flung him

Crashing down on the pave of the cloister below, but for Titian,

Who around painter and poet alike wound his strong arms and stayed them

Solely, until the bewildered pupils could come to the rescue.

Then, as the foes relaxed that embrace of frenzy and murder––

White, one with rage and the other with terror, and either with hatred––

Grimly the great master smiled: “You were much nearer paradise, Piero,

Than you have been for some time. Be ruled now by me and get homeward

Fast as you may, and be thankful.” And then, as the poet,

Looking neither to right nor to left, amid the smiles of the pupils

Tottered along the platform, and trembling descended the ladder

Down to the cloister pave, and, still without upward or backward

Glance, disappeared beneath the outer door of the Convent,

Titian turned again to the painter: “Farewell, Pordenone!

Learn more fairly to know me. I envy you not; and no rival

Now, or at any time, have I held you, or ever shall hold you.

Prosper and triumph still, for all me: you shall but do me honor,

Seeing that I too serve the art that your triumphs illustrate.

I for my part find life too short for work and for pleasure;

If it should touch a century’s bound, I should think it too precious

Even to spare a moment for rage at another’s good fortune.

Do not be fooled by the purblind flatterers who would persuade you

Either of us shall have greater fame through the fall of the other.

We can thrive only in common. The tardily blossoming cycles,

Flowering at last in this glorious age of our art, had not waited,

Folded calyxes still, for Pordenone or Titian.

Think you if we had not been, our pictures had never been painted?

Others had done them, or better, the same. We are only

Pencils God paints with. And think you that He had wanted for pencils

But for our being at hand? And yet––for some virtue creative

Dwells and divinely exists in the being of every creature,

So that the thing done through him is dear as if he had done it––

If I should see your power, a tint of this great efflorescence,

Fading, methinks I should feel myself beginning to wither.

They have abused your hate who told you that Titian was jealous.

Once, in my youth that is passed, I too had my hates and my envies.

’Sdeath! how it used to gall me––that power and depth of Giorgione!

I could have turned my knife in his heart when I looked at his portraits.

Ah! we learn somewhat still as the years go. Now, when I see you

Doing this good work here, I am glad in my soul of its beauty.

Art is not ours, O friend! but if we are not hers, we are nothing.

Look at the face you painted last year––or yesterday, even:

Far, so far, it seems from you, so utterly, finally, parted,

Nothing is stranger to you than this child of your soul; and you wonder––

‘Did I indeed then do it?’ No thrill of the rapture of doing

Stirs in your breast at the sight. Nay, then, not even the beauty

Which we had seemed to create is our own: the frame universal

Is as much ours. And shall I hate you because you are doing

That which when done you cannot feel yours more than I mine can feel it?

It shall belong hereafter to all who perceive and enjoy it,

Rather than him who made it; he, least of all, shall enjoy it.

They of the Church conjure us to look on death and be humble;

I say, look upon life and keep your pride if you can, then:

See how to-day’s achievement is only to-morrow’s confusion;

See how possession always cheapens the thing that was precious

To our endeavor; how losses and gains are equally losses;

How in ourselves we are nothing, and how we are anything only

As indifferent parts of the whole, that still, on our ceasing,

Whole remains as before, no less without us than with us.

Were it not for the delight of doing, the wonderful instant

Ere the thing done is done and dead, life scarce were worth living.

Ah, but that makes life divine! We are gods, for that instant immortal,

Mortal for evermore, with a few days’ rumor––or ages’––

What does it matter? We, too, have our share of eating and drinking,

Love, and the liking of friends––mankind’s common portion and pleasure.

Come, Pordenone, with me; I would fain have you see my Assumption

While it is still unfinished, and stay with me for the evening:

Teased with its vague unfathomed suggestion, and wonder,

As at first I wondered, what happened about Violante,

And am but ill content with those metaphysical phrases

Touching the strictly impersonal nature of personal effort,

Wherewithal Titian had fain avoided the matter at issue.