aut and strait;
Backward I strain me like a Syrian bow:
Whence false and quaint, I know,
Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye;
For ill can aim the gun that bends awry.
Come then, Giovanni, try
To succour my dead pictures and my fame;
Since foul I fare and painting is my shame.

The majority of the sonnets are devoted to love and beauty, conceived in
the spirit of exalted Platonism. They are supposed to have been written in
the latter period of his life, when he was about sixty years of age; and
though we do not know for certain to whom they were in every case
addressed, they may be used in confirmation of what I have said about his
admiration for Vittoria Colonna and Tommaso Cavalieri.[421] The following,
with its somewhat obscure adaptation of a Platonic theory of creation to
his own art, was probably composed soon after Vittoria Colonna's
death.[422]

SE 'L MIO ROZZO MARTELLO

When my rude hammer to the stubborn stone
Gives human shape, now that, now this, at will,
Following his hand who wields and guides it still,
It moves upon another's feet alone.
But He who dwells in heaven all things doth fill
With beauty by pure motions of his own;
And since tools fashion tools which else were none,
His life makes all that lives with living skill.

Now, for that every stroke excels the more
The closer to the forge it still ascend,
Her soul that quickened mine hath sought the skies:
Wherefore I find my toil will never end,
If God, the great artificer, denies
That tool which was my only aid before.

The next is peculiarly valuable, as proving with what intense and
religious fervour Michael Angelo addressed himself to the worship of
intellectual beauty. He alone, in that age of sensuality and animalism,
pierced through the form of flesh and sought the divine idea it
imprisoned:[423]--

PER RITORNAR LA

As one who will reseek her home of light,
Thy form immortal to this prison-house
Descended, like an angel piteous,
To heal all hearts and make the whole world bright.
'Tis this that thralls my heart in love's delight,
Not thy clear face of beauty glorious;
For he who harbours virtue, still will choose
To love what neither years nor death can blight.

So fares it ever with things high and rare,
Wrought in the sweat of nature; heaven above