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(From Italy)
“WHAT hangs behind that curtain?” “Wouldst thou learn? | |
| If thou art wise, thou wouldst not. ’T is by some | |
| Believed to be his master-work who looked | |
| Beyond the grave, and on the chapel wall, | |
| As though the day were come, were come and past, | 5 |
| Drew the Last Judgment. But the wisest err. | |
| He who in secret wrought, and gave it life,— | |
| For life is surely there and visible change,— | |
| Life such as none could of himself impart | |
| (They who behold it go not as they came, | 10 |
| But meditate for many and many a day),— | |
| Sleeps in the vault beneath. We know not much; | |
| But what we know we will communicate. | |
| ’T is in an ancient record of the house; | |
| And may it make thee tremble, lest thou fall! | 15 |
| “Once,—on a Christmas eve,—ere yet the roof | |
| Rung with the hymn of the Nativity, | |
| There came a stranger to the convent gate, | |
| And asked admittance; ever and anon, | |
| As if he sought what most he feared to find, | 20 |
| Looking behind him. When within the walls, | |
| These walls so sacred and inviolate, | |
| Still did he look behind him; oft and long, | |
| With curling, quivering lip and haggard eye, | |
| Catching at vacancy. Between the fits— | 25 |
| For here, ’t is said, he lingered while he lived— | |
| He would discourse and with a mastery, | |
| A charm by none resisted, none explained, | |
| Unfelt before; but when his cheek grew pale | |
| (Nor was the respite longer, if so long, | 30 |
| Than while a shepherd in the vale below | |
| Counts, as he folds, five hundred of his flock) | |
| All was forgotten. Then, howe’er employed, | |
| He would break off, and start as if he caught | |
| A glimpse of something that would not be gone, | 35 |
| And turn and gaze and shrink into himself, | |
| As though the fiend were there, and, face to face, | |
Scowled o’er his shoulder.
Most devout he was, | |
| Most unremitting in the services,— | |
| Then, only then, untroubled, unassailed,— | 40 |
| And, to beguile a melancholy hour, | |
| Would sometimes exercise that noble art | |
| He learnt in Florence; with a master’s hand, | |
| As to this day the Sacristy attests, | |
| Painting the wonders of the Apocalypse. | 45 |
| “At length he sunk to rest, and in his cell | |
| Left, when he went, a work in secret done,— | |
| The portrait (for a portrait it must be) | |
| That hangs behind the curtain. Whence he drew, | |
| None here can doubt; for they that come to catch | 50 |
| The faintest glimpse—to catch it and be gone— | |
| Gaze as he gazed, then shrink into themselves, | |
| Acting the selfsame part. But why ’t was drawn,— | |
| Whether, in penance, to atone for guilt, | |
| Or to record the anguish guilt inflicts, | 55 |
| Or haply to familiarize his mind | |
| With what he could not fly from,—none can say, | |
| For none could learn the burden of his soul.” | |
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