Michael Angelo. Генри Уодсуорт Лонгфелло

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      IPPOLITO.

       Poor old man!

      FRA SEBASTIANO.

       Who is he?

      IPPOLITO.

       Jacopo Nardi. A brave soul;

       One of the Fuoruseiti, and the best

       And noblest of them all; but he has made me

       Sad with his sadness. As I look on you

       My heart grows lighter. I behold a man

       Who lives in an ideal world, apart

       From all the rude collisions of our life,

       In a calm atmosphere.

      FRA SEBASTIANO.

       Your Eminence

       Is surely jesting. If you knew the life

       Of artists as I know it, you might think

       Far otherwise.

      IPPOLITO.

       But wherefore should I jest?

       The world of art is an ideal world,--

       The world I love, and that I fain would live in;

       So speak to me of artists and of art,

       Of all the painters, sculptors, and musicians

       That now illustrate Rome.

      FRA SEBASTIANO.

       Of the musicians,

       I know but Goudimel, the brave maestro

       And chapel-master of his Holiness,

       Who trains the Papal choir.

      IPPOLITO.

       In church this morning,

       I listened to a mass of Goudimel,

       Divinely chanted. In the Incarnatus,

       In lieu of Latin words, the tenor sang

       With infinite tenderness, in plain Italian,

       A Neapolitan love-song.

      FRA SEBASTIANO.

       You amaze me.

       Was it a wanton song?

      IPPOLITO.

       Not a divine one.

       I am not over-scrupulous, as you know,

       In word or deed, yet such a song as that.

       Sung by the tenor of the Papal choir,

       And in a Papal mass, seemed out of place;

       There's something wrong in it.

      FRA SEBASTIANO.

       There's something wrong

       In everything. We cannot make the world

       Go right. 'T is not my business to reform

       The Papal choir.

      IPPOLITO.

       Nor mine, thank Heaven.

       Then tell me of the artists.

      FRA SEBASTIANO.

       Naming one

       I name them all; for there is only one.

       His name is Messer Michael Angelo.

       All art and artists of the present day

       Centre in him.

      IPPOLITO.

       You count yourself as nothing!

      FRA SEBASTIANO.

       Or less than nothing, since I am at best

       Only a portrait-painter; one who draws

       With greater or less skill, as best he may,

       The features of a face.

      IPPOLITO.

       And you have had

       The honor, nay, the glory, of portraying

       Julia Gonzaga! Do you count as nothing

       A privilege like that? See there the portrait

       Rebuking you with its divine expression.

       Are you not penitent? He whose skilful hand

       Painted that lovely picture has not right

       To vilipend the art of portrait-painting.

       But what of Michael Angelo?

      FRA SEBASTIANO.

       But lately

       Strolling together down the crowded Corso,

       We stopped, well pleased, to see your Eminence

       Pass on an Arab steed, a noble creature,

       Which Michael Angelo, who is a lover

       Of all things beautiful, especially

       When they are Arab horses, much admired,

       And could not praise enough.

      IPPOLITO, to an attendant.

       Hassan, to-morrow,

       When I am gone, but not till I am gone,--

       Be careful about that,--take Barbarossa

       To Messer Michael Angelo, the sculptor,

       Who lives there at Macello dei Corvi,

       Near to the Capitol; and take besides

       Some ten mule-loads of provender, and say

       Your master sends them to him as a present.

      FRA SEBASTIANO.

       A princely gift. Though Michael Angelo

       Refuses presents from his Holiness,

       Yours he will not refuse.

      IPPOLITO.

       You think him like

       Thymoetes, who СКАЧАТЬ