We are the only two that, face to face,
Do know each other, as God doth know us both.
—O fearless friendship, that held nothing back!
O absolute trust, that yielded every key,
And flung each curtain up, and drew me on
To enter the white temple of thy soul,
So vast, so cold, so waste!—and give thee sense
Of living warmth, of throbbing tenderness,
Of soft dependencies! O faith that made
Thee free to seek the spot where my dead hopes
Have sepulture, and read above the crypt
Deep graven, the tearful legend of my life!
There, gloomed with the memorials of my past,
Thou once for all didst learn what man accepts
Lothly—(how should he else?)—that never woman,
Fashioned a woman,—heart, brain, body, soul,—
Ever twice loved.
“Vittoria Colonna to Michael Angelo.”
IV
A PAGE DE CONTI FROM ISCHIA
“Unto my buried lord I give myself.”
Michael Angelo!
A man that all men honor, and the model
That all should follow; one who works and prays,
For work is prayer, and consecrates his life
To the sublime ideal of his art
Till art and life are one.
Longfellow, from “Michael Angelo; A Fragment.”