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| PADRE BANDELLI, then, complains of me | |
| Because, forsooth, I have not drawn a line | |
| Upon the Saviour’s head; perhaps, then, he | |
| Could without trouble paint that head divine. | |
| But think, O Signor Duca, what should be | 5 |
| The pure perfection of our Saviour’s face,— | |
| What sorrowing majesty, what noble grace, | |
| At that dread moment when He brake the bread, | |
| And those submissive words of pathos said, | |
| “By one among you I shall be betrayed,” | 10 |
| And say if ’t is an easy task to find, | |
| Even among the best that walk this earth, | |
| The fitting type of that divinest worth, | |
| That has its image solely in the mind. | |
| Vainly my pencil struggles to express | 15 |
| The sorrowing grandeur of such holiness. | |
| In patient thought, in ever-seeking prayer, | |
| I strive to shape that glorious face within, | |
| But the soul’s mirror, dulled and dimmed by sin, | |
| Reflects not yet the perfect image there. | 20 |
| Can the hand do before the soul has wrought? | |
| Is not our art the servant of our thought? | |
| And Judas, too,—the basest face I see | |
| Will not contain his utter infamy; | |
| Among the dregs and offal of mankind, | 25 |
| Vainly I seek an utter wretch to find. | |
| He who for thirty silver coins would sell | |
| His Lord, must be the Devil’s miracle. | |
| Padre Bandelli thinks it easy is | |
| To find the type of him who with a kiss | 30 |
| Betrayed his Lord. Well, what I can I ’ll do; | |
| And if it please his reverence and you, | |
| For Judas’ face I ’m willing to paint his. * * * * * | |
| The wilful work built by the conscious brain | |
| Is but the humble handicraft of art: | 35 |
| It has its growth in toil, its birth in pain. | |
| The Imagination, silent and apart | |
| Above the Will, beyond the conscious eye, | |
| Fashions in joyous ease and as in play | |
| Its fine creations,—mixing up alway | 40 |
| The real and the ideal, heaven and earth, | |
| Darkness and sunshine; and then, pushing forth | |
| Sudden upon our world of consciousness | |
| Its world of wonder, leaves to us the stress, | |
| By patient art, to copy its pure grace, | 45 |
| And catch the perfect features of its face. * * * * * | |
| In facile natures fancies quickly grow, | |
| But such quick fancies have but little root. | |
| Soon the narcissus flowers and dies, but slow | |
| The tree whose blossoms shall mature to fruit. | 50 |
| Grace is a moment’s happy feeling, Power | |
| A life’s slow growth; and we for many an hour | |
| Must strain and toil, and wait and weep, if we | |
| The perfect fruit of all we are would see. | |
| |
| Therefore I wait. Within my earnest thought | 55 |
| For years upon this picture I have wrought, | |
| Yet still it is not ripe; I dare not paint | |
| Till all is ordered and matured within. | |
| Hand-work and head-work have an earthly taint, | |
| But when the soul commands I shall begin. | 60 |
| |
| On themes like these I should not dare to dwell | |
| With our good Prior,—they to him would be | |
| Mere nonsense; he must touch and taste and see; | |
| And facts, he says, are never mystical. | |
| Now, the fact is, our worthy Prior says, | 65 |
| The convent is annoyed by my delays; | |
| Nor can he see why I for hours and days | |
| Should muse and dream and idle here around. | |
| I have not made a face he has not found | |
| Quite good enough before it was half done. | 70 |
| “Don’t bother more,” he says, “let it alone.” | |
| What can one say to such a connoisseur? | |
| How could a Prior and a critic err? | |
| |
| But, not to be more tedious, I confess | |
| I am disturbed to think I so distress | 75 |
| The worthy Prior. Yet ’t were wholly vain | |
| To him an artist’s feelings to explain; | |
| But, Signor Duca, you will understand, | |
| And so I treat on higher themes with you. | |
| The work you order I shall strive to do | 80 |
| With all my soul, not merely with my hand. | |
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