University of Virginia Library

LAWRENCE AND RICHARD

Lawrence
Look down the river—against the western sky—
The Ponte Santa Trinita—what throng
Slowly trails o'er with waving banners high,
With foot and horse! Surely they bear along
The spoil of one whom Florence honoureth:
And hark! the drum, the trumpeting dismay,
The wail of the triumphal march of death.

Richard
'Twill be the funeral of Giovann Duprè
Wending to Santa Croce. Let us go
And see what relic of old splendour cheers
The dying ritual.

Lawrence
They esteem him well
To lay his bones with Michael Angelo.
Who might he be?

Richard
He too a sculptor, one
Who left a work long to resist the years.

Lawrence
You make me question further.

Richard
I can tell
All as we walk. A poor woodcarver's son,
Prenticed to cut his father's rude designs
(We have it from himself), maker of shrines,
In his mean workshop in Siena dreamed;
And saw as gods the artists of the earth,
And long'd to stand on their immortal shore,
And be as they, who in his vision gleam'd,
Dowering the world with grace for evermore.
So, taxing rest and leisure to one aim,
The boy of single will and inbred skill
Rose step by step to academic fame.

Lawrence
Do I not know him then? His figures fill
The tympana o'er Santa Croce's gate;
In the museum too, his Cain, that stands
A left-handed discobolos . . . . .

Richard
So great
His vogue, that elder art of classic worth
Went to the wall to give his statues room;
And last—his country's praise could do no more—
He cut the stone that honoured good Cavour.

Lawrence
I have seen the things.

Richard
He, finding in his hands
His life-desire possest, fell not in gloom,
Nor froth'd in vanity: his Sabbath earn'd
He look'd to spend in meditative rest:
So laying chisel by, he took a pen
To tell his story to his countrymen,
And prove (he did it) that the flower of all,
Rarest to attain, is in the power of all.

Lawrence
Yet nought he ever made, that I have learn'd,
In wood or stone deserved, nay not his best,
The Greek or Tuscan name for beautiful.
'Twas level with its praise, had force to pull
Favour from fashion.

Richard
Yet he made one thing
Worthy of the lily city in her spring;
For while in vain the forms of beauty he aped,
A perfect spirit in himself he shaped;
And all his lifetime doing less than well
Where he profess'd nor doubted to excel,
Now, where he had no scholarship, but drew
His art from love, 'twas better than he knew:
And when he sat to write, lo! by him stood
The heavenly Muse, who smiles on all things good;
And for his truth's sake, for his stainless mind,
His homely love and faith, she now grew kind,
And changed the crown, that from the folk he got,
For her green laurel, and he knew it not.

Lawrence
Ah! Love of Beauty! This man then mistook
Ambition for her?

Richard
In simplicity
Erring he kept his truth; and in his book
The statue of his grace is fair to see.

Lawrence
Then buried with their great he well may be.

Richard
And number'd with the saints, not among them
Who painted saints. Join we his requiem.