A Sculptor and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

“A sculptor!” “He left no work to see!”
“A genius!” “Wherein might his genius be?”
“A dead man!” “Reverence for the dead
Must never blind to the truth,” ye said.

There was That within him which was divine;
But his soul was its prison, not its shrine;
And the fetter'd Thought could never, free,
Go forth in its strength and symmetry,

Though its prison-walls at its yearning cry
Trembled and shook exceedingly.—
Alas for the man whom God bids live,
And keep what he fain would die to give.

Ever with patient hand he sought
To give its due to his lovely Thought;

And day after day, the story tells,
He workt as one whom a god impels.

One watcht him ever, with eyes so deep
For love that no slumber knew nor sleep:
Fair in body and fair in mind,
True and patient and strong and kind.

The self-same arms had rockt their rest;
Their lips had drunk from the self-same breast;
And her mother, dying, had pray'd that she
Would her foster-brother's keeper be.

The woman her life's delight had deem'd
To work for him while the waiting seem'd
So long and dreary; and, ere 'twas o'er,
The wolf might be standing at the door:
So, having him thus in her heart, she said
The sister should be in the mother's stead.

But, seeing that she was fair and young,
And knowing the stranger's busy tongue,
She pray'd it would please him to confer
The shield of a husband's name on her.

And three days after the burial,
Through a dull rain driving slow and small,
Wet ground underfoot, grey sky overhead,
They walkt to the church and there were wed.

Man and wife, through the chilling rain,
They walkt to the sculptor's house again;
And the sculptor went upon his way
Just with the heart of yesterday,

As though, in a kind of somnambulism,
A priest had toucht with the sacred chrism
The lady given of God to be
Supreme in her grace and royalty,
And, waking, his brain refus'd to keep
The thought of what he had done in sleep.

Many a year had past away
Since Cecco and Lotta us'd to play
Together 'neath that blue sky of theirs,
And blest and were blest in their lovely pray'rs:—

I think you never would recognise
The baby lovers in any wise
In the quiet woman who goes to-day
Deep-soul'd, deep-eyed, on her daily way,
And the thin, dark man who, people say,
Is that strange Francesco da Fiesole,

Poor fool, who aspires to the artist's meed
But none has seen or shall see, indeed,
The fruit of the travail of his brain—
Thinking and toiling all in vain.

Fair was the woman's face, and sweet
Her voice, and swift were her noiseless feet,
And kind her hands; but her husband knew
Full little of her the fair and true.

To work when the dawn brake golden-fair;
At work when the stars of night shone there:
Forwatcht, forwearied at night and worn,
Yet eager to meet his work at morn.

Sometimes she whisper'd, half in fear,
“Rest for a little while, my dear.”
But he—“For the soul that God has blest
Only in perfect work is rest.”

“Yet rest is the truest work sometimes!
Out of the silence grow new rimes;
Out of the cool where shadows brood
Leaps up the soul in its strength renew'd.”
Then he smil'd, and the smile said wordlessly,
“Woman, what have I to do with thee?”

Hours, days, years, swept on, it may be,—
Which he knew not and car'd not, he,—
Art knows not Time but Eternity—
When a wonderful vision, great and sweet,
Came in the silence his soul to greet,
And, daz'd by the glory's sharp excess,
He fell in a deep unconsciousness,

With a cry that struck on her ear alone:
And the woman found him lying prone,
With his head at the base of a block of stone,
A shapeless, loveless thing he wrought,
A cenotaph of his wondrous thought.

She lifted him into the outside air,
And its breeze crept in and out of his hair,
Touching his face with a light caress,
As he lay enwrapt in the silentness.

And, just as the day had kiss'd the night,
He woke, and, with wide eyes full of light,
Lookt up to her face and murmur'd he,
“Thank God that at last through the mists I see
The star of my life arise on me.”

Oh, then the delight of sweet surprise
Glow'd in the depths of her tender eyes;
And something fairer than laughter lit
Her face with a smile most exquisite.

But not for her is that gladness deep,
And not for her are the words that leap
From his spirit's depths—“My glorious Art,
Who hast shrin'd thyself within my heart,

Pardon the weakness of earth that shrank
When the fiery draught of thy life I drank,

And teach my spirit to bear the stress
And awe of thy terrible loveliness:
As when, in the earth-sprung bush there glow'd,
And yet consum'd not its frail abode,
The awful light of the living God.”

He rose with a fresh-nerv'd energy,
And a new-born life within his eye—
“Oh, deep in my heart of hearts is writ
‘Though the vision tarry, wait for it.’”

So, when she brought him a wine-fill'd cup,
With flashing eyes he rais'd it up,
And dasht the red wine upon the floor,
For the strength of his hope sustain'd him more.

And, laughing, he said, “the gods will bless
My work with an infinite success;
For the wine I have here pour'd out shall be
Libation paid unto them by me.”

But a tear was in the woman's eye,
And the thought swept over her mournfully,
As she lookt where the red stream slowly flow'd,
That its antitype was his heart's best blood.

She watcht outside the door all night,
Nor went away till the dawn of light;

And ceaselessly on her ear there broke
The ring of her husband's chisel-stroke.

And at dawn when, weary in heart and limb,
She carried the morning meal to him,
The ground was strewn with fragments white,
Where his hand had hewn at the block all night,
The block that seem'd to her eyes to grow
More shapeless and loveless at every blow.

But she saw his eyes as the eyes of a seer,
And he spoke, and her heart stood still to hear,
“It grows and grows beneath my touch—
O Art, thank God that I love thee much!

Not in the dull coarse clay will I shrine
The thought new-born from this soul of mine—
The stately marble's purity
At once shall its glorious temple be.

The beautiful wonder grows and grows—
I carve her as on my sight she rose,
Perfection and light the ministers
To wait on each motion and look of hers.

Ah, no mere lady of perfect mould
In her shall the gazer's eye behold;

The Godhead's splendour shall surely shine
In the lightest curve and the faintest line;
And my chisel shall loftily express
That Beauty is one with Holiness.”

Oh, full on his face, as the woman went,
There glow'd the light of supreme content;
And silent she left him as, sharp and clear,
His chisel clasht on her heart and ear.

With quick, lithe step she climb'd the stair
To her room that was very bleak and bare,
Save that a rich fair robe was spread
In mocking splendour upon the bed,
Wrought with a delicate broidery
Of flower and leaf full daintily.

Many and many a weary hour
The woman had toil'd over leaf and flow'r,
For winner she of the daily bread
Wherewith her beloved one was fed.

She did not look on the broidery bright
That strain'd her eyes far into the night,
(Yet Love had made the task seem light)
But, panting as if in struggle fierce,
She tore off that sombre dress of hers,
And once, after years, was fain to free
The storm of her passionate agony.

But the early light of the morning fair
Smote full on a little mirror square,
And the woman's eye was caught, and lo!
She could not but see the lovely show:

The stately throat and the golden hair
That fell on the gleaming shoulders bare,
And the eyes that glisten'd with all the rush
Of tears, and the cheeks with their crimson flush.

She lookt and started amaz'd because
She saw how exceeding fair she was,
And cried with a cry of great despair,
“Alas! in vain am I made so fair,

For his life is utterly perishing
At the feet of that dreadful, shapeless thing
Which never can rise, in face or limb
To smile back the strength of his love on him.

O love, my love, who never wilt know
That I, thy wife, have lov'd thee so,
I would lie death-doom'd at thy sacred feet
To hear thee say but, I love thee, Sweet,

Wilt thou not open thine eyes to see
How good perfection can never be
If Nature and Art, which are its source,
Be torn from each other in grim divorce?”

Then sudden, with one great, gasping strain,
The woman regain'd her calm again,
And, when she laid down her work that night,
Her eyes were still and her cheek was white,
And never a face in the universe
More passion-free than that face of hers.

And, strong in the love whose wish and want
Is good for its darling, not to vaunt
Itself as that good's sole ministrant,
“Pray God that my husband see,” she said,
“The joy of his work accomplished.”

But sometimes the woman would sorely grieve,
As one who cannot, but would, believe:
As one who, in seeking, cannot find,
And dares to hope 'tis that he is blind.

And sometimes she brooded in dull unrest
O'er the knowledge hidden within her breast,
How some in visible form have wrought
The passion and glory of their thought,
While some in their souls, unseen must hold
What never in form can be shown or told.

The studio's door is open'd wide,
And he stands at a veiled statue's side:

The door is open'd wide and free,
For all may enter who choose and see.

As one unto whom the time doth bring
The joyful calm of the finishing,
He stands by the side of the unseen thing;
Stands calm and still with his face uprais'd,
As if on some light unseen he gaz'd.

His wife in silence holds her place
Close, close to him, with that marble face
As fair as the vision of perfectness
His soul has sobb'd and moan'd to express.

Marble-cold and marble-fair;
Is she the woman who wrestled there
Last night in the agony of prayer?
Marble-cold, and marble-pale,
She waiteth the loosing of the veil.

The veil is loost, and the sculptor's eye
Looks round in that moment's ecstasy,
With a dumb appeal for sympathy.
For, as pain dies down when hearts are there
To take and eat of the bitter fare,
So joy is half pain if none may share.

Still are they all for a little space,
And each one gazeth on other's face,

Then back to the thing that stands alone,
A thought—a work—or a block of stone.

A hush—and then, in the murmurs low,
She knows what it needeth not she know—
A march for the dead beat soft and slow;
For the great dead hope and the man who lies
With death on his heart and in his eyes.

What does it matter, silence or speech?
For there, on the height he never might reach,
His Thought, unshrin'd in the failure grim,
In terrible pathos looks at him.

The house is silent, the critics thence
Have past with pity and reverence,
And the woman is left alone to keep
Her watch by the man that God lets sleep.

Only once do his lips unclose
As he lies on her breast in deep repose:
Only the murmur'd name, the dear
Pet-name unheard for many a year,

Lotta!—the dying man to-day
Is Ceccolino again, at play
With his little comrade among the flow'rs
And hopes and joys of the long-ago hours.

“What is the moral?” ye ask me—this
I offer, tell me whether it is.
The earth all quick with the diamond's soul
In its throes oft bears but the formless coal,
So close of kin to the perfect gem
That is meet for a kingly diadem.

“This is no moral! why fail'd the man?
Ay, tell me that, if ye only can.
Why and wherefore I know not, I,
Nor take upon me the mystery
Of things, as if I were God's spy.

Think ye God answers no or yes
To men as they idly guess and guess,
“If he had lov'd or if—”?—that If
Is God's undecipher'd hieroglyph.