Of Perseus, as I had foretold the Duke. | Has been beheaded; mould; MICHAEL ANGELO. And now I see How you have turned your vices into virtues. BENVENUTO. But wherefore do I prate of this? I came To speak of other things. Duke Co- Through me invites you to return to And offers you great honors, even to One of the Forty-Eight, his Senators. MICHAEL ANGELO. His Senators! That is enough. Since Was changed by Clement Seventh from Into a Dukedom, I no longer wish soned; Guicciardini poi Philippo Strozzi strangled in his prison. vent My sharing the same fate? BENVENUTO. Why, this: if all Your friends are dead, so are your enemies. MICHAEL ANGELO. Is Aretino dead? BENVENUTO. He lives in Venice, And not in Florence. MICHAEL ANGELO. 'Tis the same to me. This wretched mountebank, whom flat terers Call the Divine, as if to make the word Unpleasant in the mouths of those who speak it And in the ears of those who hear it, sends me To be a Florentine. That dream is A letter written for the public eye, Are but the hand-maids and the servi tors, Being but imitation, not creation. BENVENUTO. And no more from the marble hew those forms That fill us all with wonder? MICHAEL ANGELO. Many statues Will there be room for in my work. Their station Already is assigned them in my mind. But things move slowly. There are hindrances, Want of material, want of means, delays And jealousies of artists, that annoy me. Who waits for no man's leisure, but steps in, Unasked and unannounced, to put a stop This is my answer to Duke Cosimo. For the first sounds I heard were of I see a statue, see it as distinctly the chisel As if it stood before me shaped and per fect In attitude and action. I have only The lovely apparition, and reveal it When I am dead, Urbino ? URBINO. Eccellenza, I must then serve another master. Poor Topolino! All men are not born artists, nor will labor E'er make them artists. URBINO. No, no more URBINO, kissing the hand of MICHAEL ANGELO. Than Emperors, or Popes, or Cardinals. MICHAEL ANGELO. Now come to thee for refuge. Here peace. Yonder I see the little hermitages Dotting the mountain side with points of light, And here St. Julian's convent, like a nest Of curlews, clinging to some windy cliff. Beyond the broad, illimitable plain Down sinks the sun, red as Apollo's quoit, That, by the envious Zephyr blown aside, Struck Hyacinthus dead, and stained the earth With his young blood, that blossomed into flowers. And now, instead of these fair deities, Dread demons haunt the earth; hermits inhabit The leafy homes of sylvan Hamadryads; And jovial friars, rotund and rubicund, Replace the old Silenus with his ass. Here underneath these venerable oaks, Wrinkled and brown and gnarled like them with age, A brother of the monastery sits, |