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MICHAEL ANGELO’S Studio. MICHAEL ANGELO with a light, working upon the Dead Christ. Midnight.
MICHAEL ANGELO. O DEATH, why is it I cannot portray | |
| Thy form and features? Do I stand too near thee? | |
| Or dost thou hold my hand, and draw me back, | |
| As being thy disciple, not thy master? | |
| Let him who knows not what old age is like | 5 |
| Have patience till it comes, and he will know. | |
| I once had skill to fashion Life and Death | |
| And Sleep, which is the counterfeit of Death; | |
| And I remember what Giovanni Strozzi | |
| Wrote underneath my statue of the Night | 10 |
| In San Lorenzo, ah, so long ago! | |
| Grateful to me is sleep! More grateful now | |
| Than it was then; for all my friends are dead; | |
| And she is dead, the noblest of them all. | |
| I saw her face, when the great sculptor Death, | 15 |
| Whom men should call Divine, had at a blow | |
| Stricken her into marble; and I kissed | |
| Her cold white hand. What was it held me back | |
| From kissing her fair forehead, and those lips, | |
| Those dead, dumb lips? Grateful to me is sleep! Enter GIORGIO VASARI. | 20 |
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GIORGIO. Good-evening, or good-morning, for I know not | |
Which of the two it is.
MICHAEL ANGELO. How came you in? | |
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GIORGIO. Why, by the door, as all men do.
MICHAEL ANGELO. Ascanio | |
Must have forgotten to bolt it.
GIORGIO. Probably. | |
| Am I a spirit, or so like a spirit, | 25 |
| That I could slip through bolted door or window? | |
| As I was passing down the street, I saw | |
| A glimmer of light, and heard the well-known chink | |
| Of chisel upon marble. So I entered, | |
| To see what keeps you from your bed so late. | 30 |
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MICHAEL ANGELO, coming forward with the lamp. You have been revelling with your boon companions, | |
| Giorgio Vasari, and you come to me | |
At an untimely hour.
GIORGIO. The Pope hath sent me. | |
| His Holiness desires to see again | |
| The drawing you once showed him of the dome | 35 |
Of the Basilica.
MICHAEL ANGELO. We will look for it. | |
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GIORGIO. What is the marble group that glimmers there | |
Behind you?
MICHAEL ANGELO. Nothing, and yet everything,— | |
| As one may take it. It is my own tomb | |
That I am building.
GIORGIO. Do not hide it from me. | 40 |
| By our long friendship and the love I bear you, | |
Refuse me not!
MICHAEL ANGELO, letting fall the lamp. Life hath become to me | |
| An empty theatre,—its lights extinguished, | |
| The music silent, and the actors gone; | |
| And I alone sit musing on the scenes | 45 |
| That once have been. I am so old that Death | |
| Oft plucks me by the cloak, to come with him; | |
| And some day, like this lamp, shall I fall down, | |
| And my last spark of life will be extinguished. | |
| Ah me! ah me! what darkness of despair! | 50 |
| So near to death, and yet so far from God. | |
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