No More Learning

Let us go in; we both will pray for peace.



VIII

THE DEAD CHRIST.

MICHAEL ANGELO'S studio. MICHAEL ANGELO, with a light,
working upon the Dead Christ. Midnight.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
O Death, why is it I cannot portray
Thy form and features? Do I stand too near thee?
Or dost thou hold my hand, and draw me back,
As being thy disciple, not thy master?
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.