No More Learning

Let him who knows not what old age is like
Have patience till it comes, and he will know.
I once had skill to fashion Life and Death
And Sleep, which is the counterfeit of Death;
And I remember what Giovanni Strozzi
Wrote underneath my statue of the Night
In San Lorenzo, ah, so long ago!

Grateful to me is sleep! More grateful now
Than it was then; for all my friends are dead;
And she is dead, the noblest of them all.
I saw her face, when the great sculptor Death,
Whom men should call Divine, had at a blow
Stricken her into marble; and I kissed
Her cold white hand. What was it held me back
From kissing her fair forehead, and those lips,
Those dead, dumb lips? Grateful to me is sleep!

Enter GIORGIO VASARI.

GIORGIO.
Good-evening, or good-morning, for I know not
Which of the two it is.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
How came you in?

GIORGIO.
Why, by the door, as all men do.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Ascanio
Must have forgotten to bolt it.

GIORGIO.
Probably.
Am I a spirit, or so like a spirit,
That I could slip through bolted door or window?
As I was passing down the street, I saw
A glimmer of light, and heard the well-known chink
Of chisel upon marble. So I entered,
To see what keeps you from your bed so late.

MICHAEL ANGELO, coming forward with the lamp.
You have been revelling with your boon companions,
Giorgio Vasari, and you come to me
At an untimely hour.

GIORGIO.
The Pope hath sent me.
His Holiness desires to see again
The drawing you once showed him of the dome
Of the Basilica.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
We will look for it.

GIORGIO.
What is the marble group that glimmers there
Behind you?

MICHAEL ANGELO.