No More Learning

You would but see a man of fourscore years,
With sunken eyes, burning like carbuncles,
Who sits at table with his friends for hours,
Cursing the Spaniards as a race of Jews
And miscreant Moors. And with what soldiery
Think you he now defends the Eternal City?

MONK.
With legions of bright angels.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
So he calls them;
And yet in fact these bright angelic legions
Are only German Lutherans.

MONK, crossing himself.
Heaven protect us?

MICHAEL ANGELO.
What further would you see?

MONK.
The Cardinals,
Going in their gilt coaches to High Mass.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Men do not go to Paradise in coaches.

MONK.
The catacombs, the convents, and the churches;
The ceremonies of the Holy Week
In all their pomp, or, at the Epiphany,
The Feast of the Santissima Bambino
At Ara Coeli. But I shall not see them.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
These pompous ceremonies of the Church
Are but an empty show to him who knows
The actors in them. Stay here in your convent,
For he who goes to Rome may see too much.
What would you further?

MONK.
I would see the painting
of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
The smoke of incense and of altar candles
Has blackened it already.

MONK.
Woe is me!
Then I would hear Allegri's Miserere,
Sung by the Papal choir.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
A dismal dirge!
I am an old, old man, and I have lived
In Rome for thirty years and more, and know
The jarring of the wheels of that great world,
Its jealousies, its discords, and its strife.