figured work inlaid with lovely incidents. In Michelangelo's poems frost and fire are almost the only images—the refining fire of the goldsmith; once or twice the phœnix; ice melting at the fire; fire struck from the rock which it afterwards consumes. Except one doubtful allusion to a journey, there are almost no incidents. But there is much of the bright sharp unerring skill with which in boyhood he gave the look of age to the head of a faun by chipping a tooth from its jaw with a single stroke of the hammer. For Dante, the amiable and devout materialism of the Middle Age sanctifies all that is presented by hand and eye. Michelangelo is always pressing forward from the outward beauty—il bel del fuor che agli occhi piace—to apprehend the unseen beauty; trascenda nella forma universale—that abstract form of beauty about which the Platonists reason. And this gives the impression in him of something flitting and unfixed, of the houseless and complaining spirit, almost clairvoyant through the frail and yielding flesh. He accounts for love at first sight by a previous state of existence—la dove io t'amai prima [1].
- ↑
The 'Contemporary Review' for September, 1872, contains translations of 'Twenty-three Sonnets from Michael Angelo,' executed with great taste and skill, from the original text as published by Guasti. I venture to quote the following:—
To Vittoria Colonna.
Bring back the time when blind desire ran free,
With bit and rein too loose to curb his flight;
Give back the buried face, once angel-bright,
That hides in earth all comely things from me;
Bring back those journeys ta'en so toilsomely.
So toilsome slow to him whose hairs are white;
Those tears and flames that in our breast unite;
If thou wilt once more take thy fill of me!Yet, Love! suppose it true that thou dost thrive
Only on bitter honey-dews of tears.
Small proflt hast thou of a weak old man.
My soul that toward the other shore doth strive,
Wards off thy darts with shafts of holier fears;
And fire feeds ill on brands no breath can fan.To Tommaso Cavalieri.
Why should I seek to ease intense desire
With still more tears and windy words of grief,
When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief
To souls whom love hath robed around with fire?
Why needs my aching heart to death aspire,
When all must die? Nay death beyond belief
Unto those eyes would be both sweet and brief,
Since in my sum of woes all joys expire!Therefore because I cannot shun the blow
I rather seek, say who must rule my breast,
Gliding between her gladness and her woe?
If only chains and bonds can make me blest.
No marvel if alone and bare I go
An armèd knight's captive and slave confessed.To Night.
O night, O sweet though sombre span of time!
All things find rest upon their journey's end—
Whoso hath praised thee well doth apprehend;
And whoso honours thee hath wisdom's prime.
Our cares thou canst to quietude sublime,
For dews and darkness are of peace the friend:
Often by thee in dreams up-borne I wend
From earth to heaven where yet I hope to climb.Thou shade of Death, through whom the soul at length
Shuns pain and sadness hostile to the heart,
Whom mourners find their last and sure relief,
Thou dost restore our suffering flesh to strength,
Driest our tears, assuagest every smart.
Purging the spirits of the pure from grief.
