Shall Man, such step within his endeavour, Man's 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 exhort you, their guerdon and glory For daring so much, before they well did it.
The first of the new, in our race's 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.
There's 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 world's congeries, Repeat in large what they practised in small, Through life after life in unlimited series;Only the scale's to be changed, that's 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 heaven's 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 Art's 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 o'er:
---No getting again what the church has grasped!
The works on the wall must take their chance;``Works never conceded to England's 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 o'er the old delusion, sadly Each master his way through the black streets taking, Where many a lost work breathes though badly---Why don't 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 ISay of a scrap of Fr
Angelico's:
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,
