Old Pictures In Florence

I.     The morn when first it thunders in March,     The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say.     As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch     Of the villa-gate this warm March day,     No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled     In the valley beneath where, white and wide     And washed by the morning water-gold,     Florence lay out on the mountain-side. II.     River and bridge and street and square     Lay mine, as much at my beck and call,     Through the live translucent bath of air,     As the sights in a magic crystal ball.     And of all I saw and of all I praised,     The most to praise and the best to see     Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised:     But why did it more than startle me? III.     Giotto, how, with that soul of yours,     Could you play me false who loved you so?     Some slights if a certain heart endures     Yet it feels, I would have your fellows know!     Faith I perceive not why I should care     To break a silence that suits them best,     But the thing grows somewhat hard to bear     When I find a Giotto join the rest. IV.     On the arch where olives overhead     Print the blue sky with twig and leaf,     (That sharp-curled leaf which they never shed)     Twixt the aloes, I used to lean in chief,     And mark through the winter afternoons,     By a gift God grants me now and then,     In the mild decline of those suns like moons,     Who walked in Florence, besides her men. V.     They might chirp and chaffer, come and go     For pleasure or profit, her men alive     My business was hardly with them, I trow,     But with empty cells of the human hive;     With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch,     The churchs apsis, aisle or nave,     Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch     Its face set full for the sun to shave. VI.     Wherever a fresco peels and drops,     Wherever an outline weakens and wanes     Till the latest life in the painting stops,     Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains!     One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick,     Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster,     A lion who dies of an asss kick,     The wronged great soul of an ancient Master. VII.     For oh, this world and the wrong it does     They are safe in heaven with their backs to it,     The Michaels and Rafaels, you hum and buzz     Round the works of, you of the little wit!     Do their eyes contract to the earths old scope,     Now that they see God face to face,     And have all attained to be poets, I hope?     Tis their holiday now, in any case. VIII.     Much they reck of your praise and you!     But the wronged great souls can they be quit     Of a world where their work is all to do,     Where you style them, you of the little wit,     Old Master This and Early the Other,     Not dreaming that Old and New are fellows:     A younger succeeds to an elder brother,     Da Vincis derive in good time from Dellos. IX.     And here where your praise might yield returns,     And a handsome word or two give help,     Here, after your kind, the mastiff girns     And the puppy pack of poodles yelp.     What, not a word for Stefano there,     Of brow once prominent and starry,     Called Natures Ape and the worlds despair     For his peerless painting? (See Vasari.) X.     There stands the Master. Study, my friends,     What a mans work comes to! So he plans it,     Performs it, perfects it, makes amends     For the toiling and moiling, and theres its transit!     Happier the thrifty blind-folk labour,     With upturned eye while the hand is busy,     Not sidling a glance at the coin of their neighbour!     Tis looking downward that makes one dizzy. XI.     If you knew their work you would deal your dole.     May I take upon me to instruct you?     When Greek Art ran and reached the goal,     Thus much had the world to boast in fruct     The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken,     Which the actual generations garble,     Was re-uttered, and Soul (which Limbs betoken)     And Limbs (Soul informs) made new in marble. XII.     So you saw yourself as you wished you were,     As you might have been, as you cannot be;     Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there:     And grew content in your poor degree     With your little power, by those statues godhead,     And your little scope, by their eyes full sway,     And your little grace, by their grace embodied,     And your little date, by their forms that stay. XIII.     You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am?     Even so, you will not sit like Theseus.     You would prove a model? The Son of Priam     Has yet the advantage in arms and knees use.     Youre wroth can you slay your snake like Apollo?     Youre grieved still Niobes the grander!     You live theres the Racers frieze to follow     You die theres the dying Alexander. XIV.     So, testing your weakness by their strength,     Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty,     Measured by Art in your breadth and length,     You learned to submit is a mortals duty.     When I say you tis the common soul,     The collective, I mean: the race of Man     That receives life in parts to live in a whole,     And grow here according to Gods clear plan. XV.     Growth came when, looking your last on them all,     You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day     And cried with a start What if we so small     Be greater and grander the while than they?     Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?     In both, of such lower types are we     Precisely because of our wider nature;     For time, theirs ours, for eternity. XVI.     To-days brief passion limits their range;     It seethes with the morrow for us and more.     They are perfect how else? they shall never change:     We are faulty why not? we have time in store.     The Artificers hand is not arrested     With us we are rough-hewn, nowise polished:     They stand for our copy, and, once invested     With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished. XVII.     Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven     The better! Whats come to perfection perishes.     Things learned on earth, we shall practise in heaven:     Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes.     Thyself shalt afford the example, Giotto!     Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish,     Done at a stroke, was just (was it not?) O!     Thy great Campanile is still to finish. XVIII.     Is it true that we are now, and shall be hereafter,     But what and where depend on lifes minute?     Hails heavenly cheer or infernal laughter     Our first step out of the gulf or in it?     Shall Man, such step within his endeavour,     Mans face, have no more play and action     Than joy which is crystallized for ever,     Or grief, an eternal petrifaction? XIX.     On which I conclude, that the early painters,     To cries of Greek Art and what more wish you?     Replied, To become now self-acquainters,     And paint man, man, whatever the issue!     Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,     New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:     To bring the invisible full into play!     Let the visible go to the dogs what matters? XX.     Give these, I say, full honour and glory     For daring so much, before they well did it.     The first of the new, in our races story,     Beats the last of the old; tis no idle quiddit.     The worthies began a revolution,     Which if on earth you intend to acknowledge,     Why, honour them now (ends my allocution)     Nor confer your degree when the folk leave college. XXI.     Theres a fancy some lean to and others hate     That, when this life is ended, begins     New work for the soul in another state,     Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins:     Where the strong and the weak, this worlds congeries,     Repeat in large what they practised in small,     Through life after life in unlimited series;     Only the scales to be changed, thats all. XXII.     Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen     By the means of Evil that Good is best,     And, through earth and its noise, what is heavens serene,     When our faith in the same has stood the test     Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,     The uses of labour are surely done;     There remaineth a rest for the people of God:     And I have had troubles enough, for one. XXIII.     But at any rate I have loved the season     Of Arts spring-birth so dim and dewy;     My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan,     My painter who but Cimabue?     Nor ever was man of them all indeed,     From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlandaio,     Could say that he missed my critic-meed.     So, now to my special grievance heigh ho! XXIV.     Their ghosts still stand, as I said before,     Watching each fresco flaked and rasped,     Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed oer:     No getting again what the church has grasped!     The works on the wall must take their chance;     Works never conceded to Englands thick clime!     (I hope they prefer their inheritance     Of a bucketful of Italian quick-lime.) XXV.     When they go at length, with such a shaking     Of heads oer the old delusion, sadly     Each master his way through the black streets taking,     Where many a lost work breathes though badly     Why dont they bethink them of who has merited?     Why not reveal, while their pictures dree     Such doom, how a captive might be out-ferreted?     Why is it they never remember me? XXVI.     Not that I expect the great Bigordi,     Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose;     Nor the wronged Lippino; and not a word I     Say of a scrap of Fr Angelicos:     But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi,     To grant me a taste of your intonaco     Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?     Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco? XXVII.     Could not the ghost with the close red cap,     My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman,     Save me a sample, give me the hap     Of a muscular Christ that shows the draughtsman?     No Virgin by him the somewhat petty,     Of finical touch and tempera crumbly     Could not Alesso Baldovinetti     Contribute so much, I ask him humbly? XXVIII.     Margheritone of Arezzo,     With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret     (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,     You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?)     Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion,     Where in the foreground kneels the donor?     If such remain, as is my conviction,     The hoarding it does you but little honour. XXIX.     They pass; for them the panels may thrill,     The tempera grow alive and tinglish;     Their pictures are left to the mercies still     Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English,     Who, seeing mere moneys worth in their prize,     Will sell it to somebody calm as Zeno     At naked High Art, and in ecstasies     Before some clay-cold vile Carlino! XXX.     No matter for these! But Giotto, you,     Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it,     Oh, never! it shall not be counted true     That a certain precious little tablet     Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover,     Was buried so long in oblivions womb     And, left for another than I to discover,     Turns up at last! and to whom? to whom? XXXI.     I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito,     (Or was it rather the Ognissanti?)     Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe!     Nay, I shall have it yet! Detur amanti!     My Koh-i-noor or (if thats a platitude)     Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofis eye     So, in anticipative gratitude,     What if I take up my hope and prophesy? XXXII.     When the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard     Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing,     To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard,     We shall begin by way of rejoicing;     None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge),     Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer,     Hunting Radetzkys soul like a partridge     Over Morello with squib and cracker. XXXIII.     This time well shoot better game and bag em hot     No mere display at the stone of Dante,     But a kind of sober Witan-agemot     (Casa Guidi, quod videas ante)     Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence,     How Art may return that departed with her.     Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraines,     And bring us the days of Orgagna hither! XXXIV.     How we shall prologize, how we shall perorate,     Utter fit things upon art and history     Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero rate,     Make of the want of the age no mystery;     Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras,     Show monarchy ever its uncouth cub licks     Out of the bears shape into Chimras,     While Pure Arts birth is still the republics. XXXV.     Then one shall propose (in a speech curt Tuscan,     Expurgate and sober, with scarcely an issimo,)     To end now our half-told tale of Cambuscan,     And turn the bell-towers alt altissimo.     And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia     The Campanile, the Duomos fit ally,     Shall soar up in gold full fifty braccia,     Completing Florence, as Florence Italy. XXXVI.     Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold     Is broken away, and the long-pent fire,     Like the golden hope of the world, unbaffled     Springs from its sleep, and up goes the spire     While God and the People plain for its motto,     Thence the new tricolour flaps at the sky?     At least to foresee that glory of Giotto     And Florence together, the first am I!