Long did the learned enchanter stay
To weave his spells and still there past,
As in the lantern's shifting play
Group after group in close array,
Each fairer, grander, than the last.
But the great triumph of his power
Was yet to come:—gradual and slow,
(As all that is ordained to tower
Among the works of man must grow,)
The sacred vision stole to view,
In that half light, half shadow shown,
Which gives to even the gayest hue
A sobered, melancholy tone.
It was a vision of that last,[9]
Sorrowful night which Jesus past
With his disciples when he said
Mournfully to them—"I shall be
"Betrayed by one who here hath fed
"This night at the same board with me."
And tho' the Saviour in the dream
Spoke not these words, we saw them beam
Legibly in his eyes (so well
The great magician workt his spell),
And read in every thoughtful line
Imprinted on that brow divine.
The meek, the tender nature, grieved,
Not angered to be thus deceived—
Celestial love requited ill
For all its care, yet loving still—
Deep, deep regret that there should fall
From man's deceit so foul a blight
Upon that parting hour—and all
His Spirit must have felt that night.
Who, soon to die for human-kind,
Thought only, mid his mortal pain,
How many a soul was left behind
For whom he died that death in vain!
Such was the heavenly scene—alas!
That scene so bright so soon should pass
But pictured on the humid air,
Its tints, ere long, grew languid there;[10]
And storms came on, that, cold and rough,
Scattered its gentlest glories all—
As when the baffling winds blow off
The hues that hang o'er Terni's fall,—
Till one by one the vision's beams
Faded away and soon it fled.
To join those other vanisht dreams
That now flit palely 'mong the dead,—
The shadows of those shades that go.
Around Oblivion's lake below!
[1] The paintings of those artists who were introduced into Venice and Florence from Greece.
[2] Margaritone of Orezzo, who was a pupil and imitator of the Greeks, is said to have invented this art of gilding the ornaments of pictures, a practice which, though it gave way to a purer taste at the beginning of the 16th century, was still occasionally used by many of the great masters: as by Raphael in the ornaments of the Fornarina, and by Rubens not unfrequently in glories and flames.
[3] The works of Masaccio.—For the character of this powerful and original genius, see Sir Joshua Reynolds's twelfth discourse. His celebrated frescoes are in the church of St. Pietro del Carmine, at Florence.
[4] All the great artists studies, and many of them borrowed from Masaccio. Several figures in the Cartoons of Raphael are taken, with but little alteration, from his frescoes.
[5] "And a light shined in the prison … and his chains fell off from his hands."—Acts.
[6] Leonardo da Vinci.
[7] He is said to have been four years employed upon the portrait of this fair Florentine, without being able, after all, to come up to his idea of her beauty.