No More Learning

They will not know the secret of my life,
Locked up in silence, or but vaguely hinted
In uncouth rhymes, that may perchance survive
Some little space in memories of men!
Each one performs his life-work, and then leaves it;
Those that come after him will estimate
His influence on the age in which he lived.



V

PALAZZO BELVEDERE

TITIAN'S studio. A painting of Danae with a curtain before it.
TITIAN,
MICHAEL ANGELO, and GIORGIO VASARI.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
So you have left at last your still lagoons,
Your City of Silence floating in the sea,
And come to us in Rome.

TITIAN.
I come to learn,
But I have come too late. I should have seen
Rome in my youth, when all my mind was open
To new impressions. Our Vasari here
Leads me about, a blind man, groping darkly
Among the marvels of the past. I touch them,
But do not see them.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
There are things in Rome
That one might walk bare-footed here from Venice
But to see once, and then to die content.

TITIAN.
I must confess that these majestic ruins
Oppress me with their gloom. I feel as one
Who in the twilight stumbles among tombs,
And cannot read the inscriptions carved upon them.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
I felt so once; but I have grown familiar
With desolation, and it has become
No more a pain to me, but a delight.

TITIAN.
I could not live here. I must have the sea,
And the sea-mist, with sunshine interwoven
Like cloth of gold; must have beneath my windows
The laughter of the waves, and at my door
Their pattering footsteps, or I am not happy.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Then tell me of your city in the sea,
Paved with red basalt of the Paduan hills.
Tell me of art in Venice. Three great names,
Giorgione, Titian, and the Tintoretto,
Illustrate your Venetian school, and send
A challenge to the world. The first is dead,
But Tintoretto lives.

TITIAN.
And paints with fires
Sudden and splendid, as the lightning paints
The cloudy vault of heaven.

GIORGIO.
Does he still keep
Above his door the arrogant inscription
That once was painted there,--"The color of Titian,
With the design of Michael Angelo"?