University of Virginia Library

I know that picture's meaning,—the unknown,
Called School of Umbria; it stands alone;
Those prayerful fingers never worked to fame,—
A master's hand, though silence keeps his name.
But for the meaning, gaze awhile and plain
The thought he worked in warms to life again:
Love made those features living, such a face
Smiled once,—on whom? Say in a lofty place
He could not climb to,—in those eyes' blue deeps
The reverence of unreached ideals keeps
The human memory, not a face of dreams,
And coldly beautiful, but one that seems
Caught in the likeness that a lover's eyes
Devoutly worshipped to idealize;
And since creation is akin to prayer
He made that face God's Mother, and set her there
Among the lilies by the hill-side town.
And then the child, a flower-face to crown
The human love-dream, little hands entwined
Round one surrendered finger, to my mind
Just such close watching, tenderness expressed
As those who miss it learn to look for best.
Perugian, say we,—look, the lilies lean
Against the mountain, dips the vale between,
Yonder's Assisi on the nearer ridge,
And that's the gorge that hides the giant bridge
Joining Spoleto, and beyond, away
Hill-crests like waves in purple to midday.
That was his thought, to make his art her shrine,
And lift her human up to the divine;
So smiles Madonna, so evermore sits she
Against the Umbrian blue mountain sea.

Why do I think so? Why, because if I
Could paint just one such picture ere I die,
Make one thought everlasting, I would choose
His theme, the Mother and the Child, and use
A face as sweet as this was; in the Child
Reflect its beauty, only undefiled
Of pain and sorrow and knowledge, and would set
Both in a garden that is lilied yet
With beds her own hands tended, and enclose
All in a girdle of the hills she chose
Of earth's fair homes to dwell in, keeping so
The tender fragrance of dead years ago.

I would not change these few square feet for halls
Of Ghirlandajo, for the magic walls
Of this your Cambio,—I would rather keep
My silent record of his nameless sleep,
Dream back his story through the long blank years—
Believe those lilies once were dewed with tears.