... Love, we are in God's hand. How strange now, looks the life He makes us lead! So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! I feel He laid the fetter: let it lie! This chamber for example--turn your head-- All that's behind us! you don't understand Nor care to understand about my art, But you can hear at least when people speak; And that cartoon, the second from the door --It is the thing, Love! so such things should be-- Behold Madonna, I am bold to say. I can do with my pencil what I know, What I see, what at bottom of my heart I wish for, if I ever wish so deep-- Do easily, too--when I say perfectly I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge Who listened to the Legate's talk last week, And just as much they used to say in France. At any rate 'tis easy, all of it, No sketches first, no studies, that's long past-- I do what many dream of all their lives --Dream? strive to do, and agonise to do, And fail in doing. I could count twenty such On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, Who strive--you don't know how the others strive To paint a little thing like that you smeared Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,-- Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, (I know his name, no matter) so much less! Well, less is more, Lucrezia! I am judged. There burns a truer light of God in them, In their vexed, beating, stuffed and stopped-up brain, Heart, or whate'er else, that goes on to prompt This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine. Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me, Enter and take their place there sure enough, Though they come back and cannot tell the world. My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here. (_Andrea del Sarto._)