More grateful still in senseless stone to live;
Gladly both sight and hearing I forego;
Oh, then, awake me not. Hush—whisper low."
Of Day, Mrs. Oliphant says, in her "Makers of Florence," "Bursting herculean from his strong prison, half heroic, nothing known of him but the great brow and resolute eyes, and those vast limbs, which were not yet free from the cohesion of the marble, though alive with such strain of action."
Twilight is the strong figure of a man. Dawn, or Morning, Grimm considers "the most beautiful of all. She is lying outstretched on the gently sloping side of the lid of the sarcophagus. Not, however, resting, but as if, still in sleep, she had moved towards us; so that, while the upper part of the back is still reclining, the lower part is turned to us. She is lying on her right side; the leg next us, only feebly bent at the knee is stretching itself out; the other is half drawn up, and with the knee bent out, as if it was stepping forward and seeking for sure footing. An entire symphony of Beethoven lies in this statue."
In 1534, the same year in which the Medici statues were finished, Michael Angelo's father died, at the age of ninety. The artist gave him a costly burial, and wrote a pathetic poem in his memory. The beloved brother, Buonarotto, had died in Michael Angelo's arms. His young mother had died years before when he went to Rome, scarcely more than a boy.
"Already had I wept and sighed so much,
I thought all grief forever at an end,
Exhaled in sighs, shed forth in bitter tears.
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