To care about his asthma: it's the life!" But there my triumph's straw-fire flared and funked; Their betters took their turn to see and say: The Prior and the learned pulled a face And stopped all that in no time. "How? what's here? 175 Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all! Faces, arms, legs, and bodies like the true As much as pea and pea! It's devil's-game! Your business is not to catch men with show, With homage to the perishable clay, 180 But lift them over it, ignore it all, Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh. Your business is to paint the souls of men--- Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke ... no, it's not ... It's vapor done up like a new-born babe-- 185 (In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth) It's ... well, what matters talking, it's the soul! Give us no more of body than shows soul! Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God, That sets us praising--why not stop with him? 190 Why put all thoughts of praise out of our head With wonder at lines, colors, and what not? Paint the soul; never mind the legs and arms! Rub all out; try at it a second time. Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts, 195 She's just my niece ... Herodias, I would say-- Who went and danced and got men's heads cut off! Have it all out!" Now, is this sense, I ask? A fine way to paint soul, by painting body So ill the eye can't stop there, must go further, 200 And can't fare worse! Thus, yellow does for white When what you put for yellow's simply black, And any sort of meaning looks intense When all beside itself means and looks naught. Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn, 205 Left foot and right foot, go a double step, Make his flesh liker and his soul more like, Both in their order? Take the prettiest face, The Prior's niece ... patron-saint--is it so pretty You can't discover if it means hope, fear, 210 Sorrow, or joy? Won't beauty go with these? Suppose I've made her eyes all right and blue, Can't I take breath and try to add life's flash, And then add soul and heighten them three-fold? Or say there's beauty with no soul at all-- 215 (I never saw it--put the case the same--) If you get simple beauty and naught else, You get about the best thing God invents: That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed, Within yourself, when you return Him thanks. 220 "Rub all out!" Well, well, there's my life, in short, And so the thing has gone on ever since. I'm grown a man no doubt; I've broken bounds: You should not take a fellow eight years old And make him swear to never kiss the girls. 225