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This hour has been an hour! Another smile?
If you would sit thus by me every night
I should work better, do you comprehend?
I mean that I should earn more, give you more.
See, it is settled dusk now; there’s a star;
Morello’s gone, the watch-lights show the wall,
The cue-owls speak the name we call them by. 210
Come from the window, Love,–come in, at last,
Inside the melancholy little house
We built to be so gay with. God is just.
King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights
When I look up from painting, eyes tired out,
The walls become illumined, brick from brick
Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce, bright gold,
That gold of his I did cement them with!
Let us but love each other. Must you go?
That Cousin here again? he waits outside? 220
Must see you–you, and not with me? Those loans?
More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that?
Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend?
While hand and eye and something of a heart
Are left me, work’s my ware, and what’s it worth?
I’ll pay my fancy. Only let me sit
The gray remainder of the evening out,
Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly
How I could paint, were I but back in France,
One picture, just one more–the Virgin’s face, 230
Not yours this time! I want you at my side
To hear them–that is, Michel Agnolo–
Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.
Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend.
I take the subjects for his corridor,
Finish the portrait out of hand–there, there,
And throw him in another thing or two
If he demurs; the whole should prove enough
To pay for this same Cousin’s freak. Beside,
What’s better and what’s all I care about, 240
Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff! 241
Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he,
The Cousin! what does he to please you more?

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 laboured 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 love me quite enough, it seems to-night.
This must suffice me here. What would one have?
In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance–
Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, 260
Meted on each side by the angel’s reed,
For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo, and me 262
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.

NOTE:

An Italian painter, of the Florentine school; born 1487, died 1531. His merits and defects as an artist are given in the poem. The crime to which he is here made to refer was the use, for building himself a house, of the money intrusted to him by the French king for the purchase of works of art. For an account of his life and work see the article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Vasari’s Lives of the Painters.

15. =Fiesole= (pronounced Fe-[=’a]-so-l[ve]). A small Italian town near Florence.

119. =Rafael=. The great painter, Raphael (1483-1520).

130. =Agnolo=. Michael Angelo (1475-1584), one of Italy’s greatest men: famous as sculptor, painter, architect, and poet.

150. =Fontainebleau=. A town southeast of Paris, formerly the residence of French kings, and still famous for its Renaissance architecture and for the landscapes around it.

241. =scudi=. The scudo is an Italian silver coin worth about one dollar.

262. =Leonard=. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), another of Italy’s great men: artist, poet, musician, and scientist.