I could have painted pictures like that youth's

       Ye praise so.  How my soul springs up! No bar

     Stayed me—ah, thought which saddens while it soothes!

       —Never  did fate forbid me, star by star,

     To outburst on your night with all my gift

       Of fires from God: nor would my flesh have shrunk

     From seconding my soul, with eyes uplift

       And wide to heaven, or, straight like thunder, sunk

     To the centre, of an instant; or around

       Turned calmly and inquisitive, to scan                   10

     The license and the limit, space and bound,

       Allowed to truth made visible in man.

     And, like that youth ye praise so, all I saw,

       Over the canvas could my hand have flung,

     Each face obedient to its passion's law,

       Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue;

     Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood,

       A-tiptoe for the blessing of embrace,

     Or Rapture drooped the eyes, as when her brood

       Pull down the nesting dove's heart to its place;         20

     Or Confidence lit swift the forehead up,

       And locked the mouth fast, like a castle braved—

     0 human faces, hath it spilt, my cup?

       What did ye give me that I have not saved?

     Nor will I say I have not dreamed (how well!)

       Of going—I, in each new picture—forth,

     As, making new  hearts beat and bosoms swell,

       To Pope or Kaiser, East, West, South, or North,

     Bound for the calmly-satisfied great State,

       Or glad aspiring little burgh, it went,                  30

     Flowers cast upon the car which bore the freight,

       Through old streets named afresh from the event,

     Till it reached home, where learned age should greet

       My face, and youth, the star not yet distinct

     Above his hair, lie learning at my feet!—

       Oh, thus to live, I and my picture, linked

     With love about, and praise, till life should end,

       And then not go to heaven, but linger here,

     Here on my earth, earth's every man my friend—

       The thought grew frightful, 't was so wildly dear!       40

     But a voice changed it.  Glimpses of such sights

       Have scared me, like the revels through a door

     Of some strange house of idols at its rites!

       This world seemed not the world it was before:

     Mixed with my loving trusting ones, there trooped

       . . . Who  summoned those cold faces that begun

     To press on me and judge me?  Though I stooped

       Shrinking, as from the soldiery a nun,

     They drew me forth, and spite of me . . . enough!

       These buy and sell our pictures, take and give,          50

     Count them for garniture and household-stuff,

       And where they live needs must our pictures live

     And see their faces, listen to their prate,

       Partakers of their daily pettiness,

     Discussed of—"This I love, or this I hate,

       This likes me more, and this affects me less!"

     Wherefore I chose my portion.  If at whiles

       My heart sinks, as monotonous I paint

     These endless cloisters and eternal aisles

       With the same series.  Virgin, Babe and Saint,           60

     With the same cold calm beautiful regard—

       At least no merchant traffics in my heart;

     The sanctuary's gloom at least shall ward

       Vain tongues from where my pictures stand apart;

     Only prayer breaks the silence of the shrine

       While, blackening in the daily candle-smoke,

     They moulder on the damp wall's travertine,

       'Mid echoes the light footstep never woke.

     So, die my pictures! surely, gently die!

       O youth, men praise so—holds their praise its worth?    70

     Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry?

       Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?

     NOTES

     "Pictor Ignotus" is a reverie characteristic of a monastic painter

     of the Renaissance who recognizes, in the genius of a youth whose

     pictures are praised, a gift akin to his own, but which he has never

     so exercised, spite of the joy such free human expression and

     recognition of his power would have given him, because he could not

     bear to submit his art to worldly contact.  So he has chosen to sink

     his name in unknown service to the Church, and to devote his fancy

     to pure and beautiful but cold and monotonous repetitions of sacred

     themes.  His gentle regret that his own pictures will moulder

     unvisited is half wonderment that the youth can endure the sullying

     of his work by secular fame.

     67. Travertine: a white limestone, the name being a corruption of

     [Tiburtinus], from [Tibur] , now Tivoli, near Rome, whence this

     stone comes.