ift of
spiritual vision.

5.

They might chirp and chaffer, come and go
For pleasure or profit, her men alive--
My business was hardly with them, I trow,
But with empty cells of the human hive;
--With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch,
The church's apsis, aisle or nave,
Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch,
Its face set full for the sun to shave.

6.

Wherever a fresco peels and drops,
Wherever an outline weakens and wanes
Till the latest life in the painting stops,
Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains:
One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick,
Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster,
--A lion who dies of an ass's kick,
The wronged great soul of an ancient Master.

--
St. 6. "He sees the ghosts of the early Christian masters,
whose work has never been duly appreciated, standing sadly by
each mouldering Italian Fresco."--Dowden.

7.

For oh, this world and the wrong it does!
They are safe in heaven with their backs to it,
The Michaels and Rafaels, you hum and buzz
Round the works of, you of the little wit!
Do their eyes contract to the earth's old scope,
Now that they see God face to face,
And have all attained to be poets, I hope?
'Tis their holiday now, in any case.

8.

Much they reck of your praise and you!
But the wronged great souls--can they be quit
Of a world where their work is all to do,
Where you style them, you of the little wit,
Old Master This and Early the Other,
Not dreaming that Old and New are fellows:
A younger succeeds to an elder brother,
Da Vincis derive in good time from Dellos.

--
St. 8. Much they reck of your praise and you!: the Michaels
and Rafaels. Leonardo da Vinci (b. at Vinci, in the Val d'Arno,
below Florence, 1452); "in him the two lines of artistic descent,
tracing from classic Rome and Christian Byzantium, meet."--Heaton's
`History of Painting'. Dello di Niccolo Delli, painter and sculptor,
fl. first half 15th cent.

9.

And here where your praise might yield returns,
And a handsome word or two give help,
Here, after your kind, the mastiff girns,
And the puppy pack of poodles yelp.
What, not a word for Stefano there,
Of brow once prominent and starry,
Calle