Meted on each side by the angel's reed,
For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo, and me
To cover--the three first without a wife,
While I have mine! So--still they overcome
Because there's still Lucrezia,--as I choose.

Again the cousin's whistle! Go, my love.

--
29. My face, my moon:

"Once, like the moon, I made
The ever-shifting currents of the blood
According to my humor ebb and flow."
--Cleopatra, in Tennyson's `A Dream of Fair Women'.

"You are the powerful moon of my blood's sea,
To make it ebb or flow into my face
As your looks change."
--Ford and Decker's `Witch of Edmonton'.

35. A common grayness: Andrea del Sarto was distinguished
for his skill in chiaro-oscuro.

82. low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand: "Andrea del Sarto's was,
after all, but the `low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand',
and therefore his perfect art does not touch our hearts like that
of Fra Bartolommeo, who occupies about the same position with regard to
the great masters of the century as Andrea del Sarto. Fra Bartolommeo
spoke from his heart. He was moved by the spirit, so to speak,
to express his pure and holy thoughts in beautiful language,
and the ideal that presented itself to his mind, and from which he,
equally with Raphael, worked, approached almost as closely as Raphael's
to that abstract beauty after which they both longed. Andrea del Sarto
had no such longing: he was content with the loveliness of earth.
This he could understand and imitate in its fullest perfection,
and therefore he troubled himself but little about
the `wondrous paterne' laid up in heaven. Many of his Madonnas
have greater beauty, strictly speaking, than those of Bartolommeo,
or even of Raphael; but we miss in them that mysterious
spiritual loveliness that gives the latter their chief charm."
--Heaton's History of Painting.

93. Morello: the highest of the spurs of the Apennines
to the north of Florence.

96. Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?: it's beyond
their criticism.

105. The Urbinate: Raphael Santi, born 1483, in Urbino.
Andrea sees in Raphael, whose technique was inferior to his own,
his superior, as he reached above and through his art--
for it gives way.

106. George Vasari: see note under St. 9 of `Old Pictures
in Florence'.

120. Nay, Love, you did give all I asked: it must be understood
that his wife has