Joined legs and arms to the long musicnotes,

Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's,

And made a string of pictures of the world

Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun,

On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black.

"Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d' ye say?

In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark.

What if at last we get our man of parts, We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese And Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine

And put the front on it that ought to be!"

And hereupon he bade me daub away.

Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank,

Never was such prompt disemburdening. First, every sort of monk, the black and white,

I drew them, fat and lean: then, folk at church,

From good old gossips waiting to confess Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candleends,

To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot, Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there

With the little children round him in a row

Of admiration, half for his beard and half

For that white anger of his victim's son Shaking a fist at him with one fierce

arm,

Signing himself with the other because of Christ

(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this

After the passion of a thousand years) Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head,

(Which the intense eyes looked through) came at eve

On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf, Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers

(The brute took growling), prayed, and So was gone.

I painted all, then cried ""T is ask and have;

Choose, for more's ready!"-laid the ladder flat,

And showed my covered bit of cloisterwall,

The monks closed in a circle and praised loud

Till checked, taught what to see and not to see,

Being simple bodies,--"That's the very man!

Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog!

That woman 's like the Prior's niece who

(In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth)

It's... well, what matters talking, it's the soul!

Give us no more of body than shows soul !

Here 's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God,

That sets us praising,-why not stop with him?

Why put all thoughts of praise out of our head

With wonder at lines, colors, and what not?

Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms!

Rub all out, try at it a second time.

Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts,

She's just my niece... Herodias, I would say,

Who went and danced and got men's heads cut off!

Have it all out!" Now, is this sense, I ask?

A fine way to paint soul, by painting

body

grave eyes

Are peeping o'er my shoulder as I work, The heads shake still-It 's art's decline, my son !

You 're not of the true painters, great and old;

Brother Angelico's the man, you'll find ;
Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer:
Fag on at flesh, you'll never make the
third!"
Flower o' the pine,
You keep your mistr ..
I'll stick to mine!
I'm not the third, then: bless us, they
must know!
Don't you think they 're

know,
They with their Latin?

manners, and

the likeliest to [my rage, So, I swallow

Should have his apt word to excuse himself:

And harken how I plot to make amends.

I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece

. . . There's for you! Give me six months, then go, see Something in Sant' Ambrogio's! Bless the nuns !

They want a cast o' my office. I shall paint

God in the midst, Madonna and her babe, Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel brood,

Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet

As puff on puff of grated orris-root When ladies crowd to Church at mid

We come to brother Lippo for all that,
Iste perfecit opus!" So, all smile-
I shuffle sideways with my blushing face
Under the cover of a hundred wings
Thrown like a spread of kirtles when
you're gay

And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,

Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops The hothead husband! Thus I scuttle off

To some safe bench behind, not letting go

The palm of her, the little lily thing That spoke the good word for me in the nick,

Like the Prior's niece. . . Saint Lucy, I would say,

And so all's saved for me, and for the

Quietly, quietly the evening through,
I might get up to-morrow to my work
Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.
To-morrow, how you shall be glad for
this!

Your soft hand is a woman of itself,⚫ And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside.

Don't count the time lost, neither; you must serve

For each of the five pictures we require: It saves a model. So! keep looking soMy serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!

-How could you ever prick those perfect ears,

Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet

My face, my moon, my everybody's

That length of convent-wall across the way

Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;

The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,

And autumn grows, autumn in everything,

Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape
As if I saw alike my work and self
And all that I was born to be and do,
A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's
hand.

How strange now looks the life he makes us lead;

So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!
This chamber for example--turn your
[stand

head

All that 's behind us! You don't under