With the pike and lantern, for the slave that holds

John Baptist's head a-dangle by the hair With one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say)

And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped !

It's not your chance to have a bit of chalk,

A wood-coal or the like? or you should see! Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so. What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down

You know them and they take you?

like enough!

I saw the proper twinkle in your eye 'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first. Let's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.

Here's spring come, and the nights one makes up bands

To roam the town and sing our carnival, And I've been three weeks shut within

my mew,

A-painting for the great man, saints and saints

And saints again. I could not paint all

night

Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air. There came a hurry of feet and little feet, A sweep of lute strings, laughs, and whifts of song,

they went.

Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter

Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight, three slim shapes,

And a face that looked up... zooks, sir, flesh and blood,

That's all I'm made of! Into shreds it went,

Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,
All the bed-furniture a dozen knots,
There was a ladder! Down I let myself,
Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and
so dropped,

And after them. I came up with the fun Hard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met,

Flower o' the rose,

If I've been merry, what matter who knows?
And so as I was stealing back again
To get to bed and have a bit of sleep
Ere I rise up to-morrow and go work
On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast
With his great round stone to subdue the
flesh,

You snap me of the sudden. Ah, I see! Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your head

Mine's shaved-a monk, you say - the sting's in that!

If Master Cosimo announced himself,
Mum's the word naturally; but a monk!
Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now!
I was a baby when my mother died
And father died and left me in the street.
I starved there, God knows how, a year
or two

On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,

Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty

day,

My stomach being empty as your hat, The wind doubled me up and down I went. Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one

hand,

(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew) And so along the wall, over the bridge,

By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there,

While I stood munching my first bread that month:

"So, boy, you're minded," quoth the good fat father,

Wiping his own mouth, 'twas refectiontime,

"To quit this very miserable world? Will you renounce" . . . "the mouthful of bread?" thought I;

By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me;

I did renounce the world, its pride and greed,

Palace, farm, villa, shop, and bankinghouse,

Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici Have given their hearts to all at eight

years old.

Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure, 'Twas not for nothing the good bellyful, The warm serge and the rope that goes

all round,

His bone from the heap of offal in the street,

Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,

He learns the look of things, and none the less

For admonition from the hunger-pinch.
I had a store of such remarks, be sure,
Which, after I found leisure, turned to use.
I drew men's faces on my copy-books,
Scrawled them within the antiphonary's
marge,

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, candle

ends,

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,