Beatrice Signorini by Robert Browning — Read

This strange thing happened to a painter once: / Viterbo boasts the man among her sons / Of note, I seem to think: his ready tool / Picked up its precepts in Cortona's school -- / That 's Pietro Berretini, whom they call / Cortona, these Italians: greatish-small, / Our painter was his pupil, by repute / His match if not his master absolute, / Though whether he spoiled fresco more or less, / And what 's its fortune, scarce repays your guess. / Still, for one circumstance, I save his name / -- Francesco Romanelli: do the same! / He went to Rome and painted: there he knew / A wonder of a woman painting too -- / For she, at least, was no Cortona's drudge: / Witness that ardent fancy-shape -- I judge / A semblance of her soul -- she called, "Desire" / With starry front for guide, where sits the fire / She left to brighten Buonarroti's house. / If you see Florence, pay that piece your vows, / Though blockhead Baldinucci's mind, imbued / With monkish morals, bade folk "Drape the nude / And stop the scandal! " quoth the record prim / I borrow this of: hang his book and him! / At Rome, then, where these fated ones met first, / The blossom of his life had hardly burst / While hers was blooming at full beauty's stand: / No less Francesco -- when half-ripe he scanned / Consummate Artemisia -- grew one want / To have her his and make her ministrant / With every gift of body and of soul / To him. In vain. Her sphery self was whole -- / Might only touch his orb at Art's sole point. / Suppose he could persuade her to enjoint / Her life -- past, present, future -- all in his / At Art's sole point by some explosive kiss / Of love through lips, would love's success defeat / Artistry's haunting curse -- the Incomplete? / Artists no doubt they both were, -- what beside / Was she? who long had felt heart, soul spread wide / Her life out, knowing much and loving well, / On either side Art's narrow space where fell / Reflection from his own speck: but the germ / Of individual genius -- what we term / The very self, the God-gift whence had grown / Heart's life and soul's life -- how make that his own? / Vainly his Art, reflected, smiled in small / On Art's one facet of her ampler ball; / The rest, touch-free, took in, gave back heaven, earth, / All where he was not. Hope, well-nigh ere birth / Came to Desire, died off all-unfulfilled. / "What though in Art I stand the abler-skilled," / (So he conceited: mediocrity / Turns on itself the self-transforming eye) / "If only Art were suing, mine would plead / To purpose: man -- by nature I exceed / Woman the bounded: but how much beside / She boasts, would sue in turn and be denied! / Love her? My own wife loves me in a sort / That suits us both: she takes the world's report / Of what my work is worth, and, for the rest, / Concedes that, while his consort keeps her nest, / The eagle soars a licensed vagrant, lives / A wide free life which she at least forgives -- / Good Beatricé Signorini! Well / And wisely did I choose her. But the spell / To subjugate this Artemisia -- where? / She passionless? -- she resolute to care / Nowise beyond the plain sufficiency / Of fact that she is she and I am I / -- Acknowledged arbitrator for us both / In her life as in mine which she were loth / Even to learn the laws of? No, and no, / Twenty times over! Ay, it must be so: / I for myself, alas! " / Whereon, instead / Of the checked lover's-utterance -- why, he said / -- Leaning over her easel: "Flesh is red" / (Or some such just remark) -- "by no means white / As Guido's practice teaches: you ate right. " / Then came the better impulse: "What if pride / Were wisely trampled on, whate'er betide? / If I grow hers, not mine -- join lives, confuse / Bodies and spirits, gain her not but lose / Myself to Artemisia? That were love! / Of two souls -- one must bend, one rule above: / If I crouch under proudly, lord turned slave, / Were it not worthier both than if she gave / Herself -- in treason to herself -- to me?"