Swinging upon the yoke to and fro, a-drip and a-glimmer. All in an instant was changed, and once more the cloister was peopled By the serene monks of old, and against walls of the cloisters, High on his scaffolding raised, Pordenone[5] wrought at his frescos. Armed with dagger and sword, as the legend tells, against Titian, Who was his rival in art and in love. IV. It seemed to be summer, In the forenoon of the day; and the master's diligent pencil Laid its last light touches on Eve driven forth out of Eden, Otherwise Violante, and while his pupils about him Wrought and chattered, in silence ran the thought of the painter: "She, and forever she! Is it come to be my perdition? Shall I, then, never more make the face of a beautiful woman But it must take her divine, accursed beauty upon it, And, when I finish my work, stand forth her visible presence? Ah! I could take this sword and strike it into her bosom! Though I believe my own heart's blood would stream from the painting, So much I love her! Yes, that look is marvellous like you, Wandering, tender--such as I'd give my salvation to win you Once to bend upon me! But I knew myself better than make you, Lest I should play the fool about you here before people, Helpless to turn away from your violet eyes, Violante, That have turned all my life to a vision of madness." The painter Here unto speech betraying the thoughts he had silently pondered, "Visions, visions, my son?" said a gray old friar who listened, Seated there in the sun, with his eye on the work of the painter Fishily fixed, while the master blasphemed behind his mustaches. "Much have I envied your Art, who vouchsafeth to those who adore her Visions of heavenly splendor denied to fastings and vigils. I have spent days and nights of faint and painful devotion, Scourged myself almost to death, without one glimpse of the glory Which your touch has revealed in the face of that heavenly maiden. Pleasure me to repeat what it was you were saying of visions: Fain would I know how they come to you, though _I_ never see them, And in my thickness of hearing I fear some words have escaped me." Then, while the painter glared on the lifted face of the friar, Baleful, breathless, bewildered, fiercer than noon in the dog-days, Round the circle of pupils there ran a tittering murmur; From the lips to the ears of those nameless Beppis and Gigis Buzzed the stinging whisper: "Let's hear Pordenone's confession." Well they knew the master's luckless love, and whose portrait He had unconsciously painted there, and guessed that his visions Scarcely were those conceived by the friar, who constantly blundered Round the painter at work, mistaking every subject-- Noah's drunken Debauch for the Stoning of Stephen the Martyr, And the Conversion of Paul for the Flight into Egypt; forever