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MICHAEL ANGELO and TOMASO DE’ CAVALIERI.
CAVALIERI. WHAT do you here alone, Messer Michele? | |
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MICHAEL ANGELO. I come to learn.
CAVALIERI. You are already master, | |
And teach all other men.
MICHAEL ANGELO. Nay, I know nothing; | |
| Not even my own ignorance, as some | |
| Philosopher hath said. I am a school-boy | 5 |
| Who hath not learned his lesson, and who stands | |
| Ashamed and silent in the awful presence | |
| Of the great master of antiquity | |
Who built these walls cyclopean.
CAVALIERI. Gaudentius | |
| His name was, I remember. His reward | 10 |
| Was to be thrown alive to the wild beasts | |
Here where we now are standing.
MICHAEL ANGELO. Idle tales | |
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CAVALIERI. But you are greater than Gaudentius was, | |
And your work nobler.
MICHAEL ANGELO. Silence, I beseech you. | |
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CAVALIERI. Tradition says that fifteen thousand men | 15 |
| Were toiling for ten years incessantly | |
Upon this amphitheatre.
MICHAEL ANGELO. Behold | |
| How wonderful it is! The queen of flowers, | |
| The marble rose of Rome! Its petals torn | |
| By wind and rain of thrice five hundred years; | 20 |
| Its mossy sheath half rent away, and sold | |
| To ornament our palaces and churches, | |
| Or to be trodden under feet of man | |
| Upon the Tiber’s bank; yet what remains | |
| Still opening its fair bosom to the sun, | 25 |
| And to the constellations that at night | |
| Hang poised above it like a swarm of bees. | |
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CAVALIERI. The rose of Rome, but not of Paradise; | |
| Not the white rose our Tuscan poet saw, | |
| With saints for petals. When this rose was perfect | 30 |
| Its hundred thousand petals were not saints, | |
| But senators in their Thessalian caps, | |
| And all the roaring populace of Rome; | |
| And even an Empress and the Vestal Virgins, | |
| Who came to see the gladiators die, | 35 |
| Could not give sweetness to a rose like this. | |
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MICHAEL ANGELO. I spake not of its uses, but its beauty. | |
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CAVALIERI. The sand beneath our feet is saturate | |
| With blood of martyrs; and these rifted stones | |
| Are awful witnesses against a people | 40 |
| Whose pleasure was the pain of dying men | |
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MICHAEL ANGELO. Tomaso Cavalieri, on my word, | |
| You should have been a preacher, not a painter! | |
| Think you that I approve such cruelties, | |
| Because I marvel at the architects | 45 |
| Who built these walls, and curved these noble arches? | |
| Oh, I am put to shame, when I consider | |
| How mean our work is, when compared with theirs! | |
| Look at these walls about us and above us! | |
| They have been shaken by earthquakes, have been made | 50 |
| A fortress, and been battered by long sieges; | |
| The iron clamps, that held the stones together, | |
| Have been wrenched from them; but they stand erect | |
| And firm, as if they had been hewn and hollowed | |
| Out of the solid rock, and were a part | 55 |
| Of the foundations of the world itself. | |
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CAVALIERI. Your work, I say again, is nobler work, | |
| In so far as its end and aim are nobler; | |
| And this is but a ruin, like the rest. | |
| Its vaulted passages are made the caverns | 60 |
| Of robbers, and are haunted by the ghosts | |
Of murdered men.
MICHAEL ANGELO. A thousand wild flowers bloom | |
| From every chink, and the birds build their nests | |
| Among the ruined arches, and suggest | |
| New thoughts of beauty to the architect. | 65 |
| Now let us climb the broken stairs that lead | |
| Into the corridors above, and study | |
| The marvel and the mystery of that art | |
| In which I am a pupil, not a master. | |
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| All things must have an end; the world itself | 70 |
| Must have an end, as in a dream I saw it. | |
| There came a great hand out of heaven, and touched | |
| The earth, and stopped it in its course. The seas | |
| Leaped, a vast cataract, into the abyss; | |
| The forests and the fields slid off, and floated | 75 |
| Like wooded islands in the air. The dead | |
| Were hurled forth from their sepulchres; the living | |
| Were mingled with them, and themselves were dead,— | |
| All being dead; and the fair, shining cities | |
| Dropped out like jewels from a broken crown. | 80 |
| Naught but the core of the great globe remained, | |
| A skeleton of stone. And over it | |
| The wrack of matter drifted like a cloud, | |
| And then recoiled upon itself, and fell | |
| Back on the empty world, that with the weight | 85 |
| Reeled, staggered, righted, and then head-long plunged | |
| Into the darkness, as a ship, when struck | |
| By a great sea, throws off the waves at first | |
| On either side, then settles and goes down | |
| Into the dark abyss, with her dead crew. | 90 |
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CAVALIERI. But the earth does not move.
MICHAEL ANGELO. Who knows? who knows? | |
| There are great truths that pitch their shining tents | |
| Outside our walls, and though but dimly seen | |
| In the gray dawn, they will be manifest | |
| When the light widens into perfect day. | 95 |
| A certain man, Copernicus by name, | |
| Sometime professor here in Rome, has whispered | |
| It is the earth, and not the sun, that moves. | |
| What I beheld was only in a dream, | |
| Yet dreams sometimes anticipate events, | 100 |
| Being unsubstantial images of things | |
| As yet unseen. | |
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