The occasion of the following was probably some more than wonted favor shown to him by Vittoria. XXVI. Great joy no less than grief doth murder men. The thief, even at the gallows, may be killed If, while through every vein with fear he's chilled, Sudden reprieve do set him free again. Thus hath this bounty from you in my pain Through all my griefs and sufferings fiercely thrilled, Coming from a breast with sovereign mercy filled, And more than weeping, cleft my heart in twain. Good news, like bad, may bring the taker death. The heart is rent as with the sharpest knife, Be it pressure or expansion cause the rift. Let thy great beauty which God cherisheth Limit my joy if it desire my life-- The unworthy dies beneath so great a gift. XXVIII The heart is not the life of love like mine. The love I love thee with has none of it. For hearts to sin and mortal thought incline And for love's habitation are unfit. God, when our souls were parted from Him, made Of me an eye--of thee, splendor and light. Even in the parts of thee which are to fade Thou hast the glory; I have only sight. Fire from its heat you may not analyze, Nor worship from eternal beauty take, Which deifies the lover as he bows. Thou hast that Paradise all within thine eyes Where first I loved thee. 'T is for that love's sake My soul's on fire with thine, beneath thy brows. The German musicians of the seventeenth century used to write voluntaries for the organ, using the shorthand of the older notation; they jotted down the formulas of the successive harmonies expressed in terms of the chords merely. The transitions and the musical explanation were left to the individual performer. And Michael Angelo has left behind him, as it were, the poetical equivalents of such shorthand musical formulas. The harmonies are wonderful. The successions show a great grasp of comprehension, but you cannot play them without filling them out. "Is that music, after all," one may ask, "which leaves so much to the performer, and is that poetry, after all, which leaves so much to the reader?" It seems you must be a Kapellmeister or a student, or dilettante of some sort, before you can transpose and illustrate these hieroglyphics. There is some truth in this criticism, and the modesty of purpose in the poems is the only answer to it. They claim no comment. Comment claims them. Call them not poetry if you will. They are a window which looks in upon the most extraordinary nature of modern times,--a nature whose susceptibility to impressions of form through the eye allies it to classical times; a nature which on the emotional side belongs to our own day.