Pictor Ignotus by Robert Browning — Read

Florence, 15 --

I could have painted pictures like that youth's / Ye praise so. How my soul springs up! No bar / Stayed me -- ah, thought which saddens while it soothes! / -- Never did fate forbid me, star by star, / To outburst on your night with all my gift / Of fires from God: nor would my flesh have shrunk / From seconding my soul, with eyes uplift / And wide to heaven, or, straight like thunder, sunk / To the centre, of an instant; or around / Turned calmly and inquisitive, to scan / The license and the limit, space and bound, / Allowed to truth made visible in man. / And, like that youth ye praise so, all I saw, / Over the canvas could my hand have flung, / Each face obedient to its passion's law. / Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue; / Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood, / A-tiptoe for the blessing of embrace, / Or Rapture drooped the eyes, as when her brood / Pull down the nesting dove's heart to its place; / Or Confidence lit swift the forehead up, / And locked the mouth fast, like a castle braved, -- / O human faces, hath it spilt, my cup? / What did ye give me that I have not saved? / Nor will I say I have not dreamed (how well! ) / Of going -- I, in each new picture, -- forth, / As, making new hearts beat and bosoms swell, / To Pope or Kaiser, East, West, South, or North, / Bound for the calmly satisfied great State, / Or glad aspiring little burgh, it went, / Flowers cast upon the car which bore the freight, / Through old streets named afresh from the event, / Till it reached home, where learned age should greet / My face, and youth, the star not yet distinct / Above his hair, lie learning at my feet! -- / Oh, thus to live, I and my picture, linked / With love about, and praise, till life should end, / And then not go to heaven, but linger here, / Here on my earth, earth's every man my friend, -- / The thought grew frightful, 't was so wildly dear! / But a voice changed it. Glimpses of such sights / Have scared me, like the revels through a door / Of some strange house of idols at its rites! / This world seemed not the world it was before: / Mixed with my loving trusting ones, there trooped / ... Who summoned those cold faces that begun / To press on me and judge me? Though I stooped / Shrinking, as from the soldiery a nun, / They drew me forth, and spite of me... enough! / These buy and sell our pictures, take and give, / Count them for garniture and household-stuff, / And where they live needs must our pictures live / And see their faces, listen to their prate, / Partakers of their daily pettiness, / Discussed of, -- "This I love, or this I hate, / This likes me more, and this affects me less! " / Wherefore I chose my portion. If at whiles / My heart sinks, as monotonous I paint / These endless cloisters and eternal aisles / With the same series, Virgin, Babe and Saint, / With the same cold calm beautiful regard, -- / At least no merchant traffics in my heart; / The sanctuary's gloom at least shall ward / Vain tongues from where my pictures stand apart: / Only prayer breaks the silence of the shrine / While, blackening in the daily candle-smoke, / They moulder on the damp wall's travertine, / 'Mid echoes the light footstep never woke. / So, die my pictures! surely, gently die! / O youth, men praise so, -- holds their praise its worth? / Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry? / Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?