Appreciations 
 eviews of 
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 A POEM 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN GALEN HOWARD
 
 PROFESSOR GEORGE R. NOYES 
 
 Professor of Slavic Languages, University of California 
 
 YOUR work has appealed to me more than ever on this 
 third hearing. Its greatest charm I find in its dramatic 
 power. You give a portrait of a really great personality, of an 
 architect absorbed in his work, and of a devout, highly trained, 
 fine-natured man, striving with all his might to make his city 
 a more lovely place by the talent that has been given him. 
 Brunelleschi's occasional bitterness and rancor are only the 
 shaded (hardly even shady) side of a noble character. Then 
 you weave in some stirring glimpses of the bustling life of 
 the city where Brunclleschi lived. Your poem is fall of pas 
 sages of beautiful description and inspiring eloquence. 
 
 FLORENCE NOYES 
 
 I HAVE just finished reading your wonderful poem. . . . 
 I am truly grateful to you For making this man live for 
 me. He was only a name before, but now he stands out in 
 my mind as a vivid, interesting, and very human personal 
 itya really convincing picture of a man who was truly great. 
 I think this side of your poem means the most to me the 
 dramatic side, so to speak and yet there are so many splen 
 did descriptions all the way through it, and so many fine bits 
 of psychological analysis, and of very true philosophy. 
 
 AMERICAN ARCHITECT 
 
 THOSE architects and their clients who in the lull of 
 daily activity allow themselves the luxury of thinking 
 about the less tangible phases of architecture will be interest 
 ed in this work,which sympathetically interprets the " Father 
 of the Renaissance." The purpose of the poem, written largely 
 in Florence, the scene of Brunelleschi's career, is in some 
 measure to portray the man and at the same time to make 
 the architect, as a type, more readily intelligible to the world. 
 The metrical expression has all that forceful dignity and sus 
 tained vigor of imagination which proclaims it the first true 
 epic of the "mother art."
 
 EDWARD ROBESON TAYLOR 
 
 Translator of "Sonnets of Heredia" 
 
 I CANNOT forbear telling you how much I enjoyed the 
 reading of your "Brunelleschi." It is the work of a man 
 that felt every line of the poem and that makes you feel it. 
 I know of no greater triumph in poetry than this. The first 
 part, with its Rome, I enjoyed very much more, perhaps, 
 than the other two, but the whole of it most admirably de 
 picts the aspiring spirit. You have put an immense deal of 
 labour in this, but it was worth it, and the work will last, 
 though it will have few readers but all true poetry has that. 
 As matter of typographic art the book cannot be surpassed. 
 
 WALTER MORRIS HART 
 
 AUOC. Prof, of English Philology, University of California 
 
 YOUR "Brunelleschi "reached me last night. I hasten to 
 send you my congratulations, most hearty and sincere, 
 and to thank you for a perfect Sunday afternoon. Chill wind 
 and rain have vanished, giving place to blue Italian skies, and 
 I have seemed to be looking, once more, over the red-tiled 
 roofs of Florence, from Giotto's tower, from the Duomo, or 
 from San Miniato, thanks to the compelling magic of your 
 lines. And still more vivid than its Florence, which I have 
 seen, is the splendid and rugged personality, of whom I have 
 known far too little. I seem to have been face to face with a 
 great Presence, with him re-living the conflicts with other 
 powerful personalities, Ghiberti's or Cosimo's, or with the 
 stupid Florentines who stood between him and the realization 
 of his great purpose: and understanding that purpose as the 
 guide and unifying principle of his life. 
 
 These are first impressions. I look forward to re-readings. 
 I shall turn back most often, I imagine, to the opening pic 
 ture, to the descriptions of the Pantheon, of Florence from 
 the Duomo, and the changing lights and shifting moods of 
 the third part. And more than once I shall have occasion to 
 quote your admirable phrasing of the contrast, in their re 
 spective relations to the past, of sculptor and architect. Does
 
 not the poet combine the two? In your own poem Shakes 
 peare and Milton and Browning are voiceless partners of the 
 compact, are they not? while character is your art, and 
 you grope in the crannied rocks of Brunelleschi's selfhood, 
 
 Whence thou derivest freedom to essay 
 Outward in realms thine only. 
 
 In these passages you seem to let one into the secret of your 
 purpose: making use, as your medium, of the great traditions 
 of English verse, to revivify a large and significant person 
 ality. What you set out to do, that, it seems to me, you ac 
 complish. 
 
 HERBERT CROLY 
 
 Editor of" The New Republic" 
 
 YOUR poem made a deep and lasting impression upon 
 my somewhat dulled poetic sensibilities. It is one of the 
 most sincere and thorough explorations of a state of mind, 
 both typical and individual, which I have ever read. The 
 mise-en-sceneis concrete and vivid, the man himself rings true, 
 while at the same time no one who has reflected upon the 
 business of being an architect can fail to be stirred by the 
 power and substance and beauty of the formative idea. 
 
 THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL 
 
 EAUTIFUL in make-up, so far as the appearance of 
 the volume is concerned, and thoughtful in content. . . . 
 The author, . . . who is himself an architect, has a keen ap 
 preciation not only of the great Florentine's life-work, but 
 of the spirit which dominated his personality. The volume 
 is an unusually handsome one. 
 
 EMANU-EL, San Francisco 
 
 THEbook,of about one hundred pages, is one of the finest 
 productions of the publisher's art. Brunelleschi was the 
 famous architect of Florence, who was named " Father of the 
 Renaissance," and Mr. Howard has succeeded admirably in 
 presenting a study in metrical form of this remarkable man. 
 
 B
 
 JOHN G. NEIHARDT 
 
 in " The Minneapolis Journal" 
 
 IT IS evidently the work of a man of culture, wide experi 
 ence of life, and profound understanding of art. The theme 
 is admirably suited to poetry, and one wonders that Brown 
 ing did not see fit to utilize it. ... Occasionally an exquisite 
 passage forces one to grant that even Browning could not 
 have surpassed the finer moments of Mr. Howard's poem. . . . 
 the high tone of the work is well sustained, and such lines 
 as the following, even when read independently of their set 
 tings, go far toward compensating for the occasional blunders : 
 
 "/ marked the wincing eye-lash and the flinch 
 Of the touched raw." 
 
 "All up the dizzy wonder to the roof." 
 
 "Tou know, my friends, we be but instruments, 
 No more, we artists; blades whose tempered steel 
 Life sharpens to swift practise, grinding down 
 'Their native roughness to such razor edge, 
 As slips twixt life and death, twixt false and true. 
 God! And when hearts are rubbed thus, who shall say 
 'The anguish of that sharping!" 
 
 One line in this poem seems to us not only to be quite 
 perfect, but to express the true gospel of craftsmanship in art, 
 with the speed and finality that always characterize the great 
 lines of a master. 
 
 "'The long, inveterate travail of the soul" 
 
 THE ARGONAUT, San Francisco 
 
 AN ARCHITECT, a man trained (as he himself de 
 scribes it) in an art that uses "symbols of no sound," 
 has tried his hand at poetry, an art in which the sound of the 
 symbol is inseparable from the art's perfection. The theme of 
 his poem is admirably chosen and would have delighted 
 Browning. It is a soliloquy in blank verse by the great Flor-
 
 entine architect of the fifteenth century, whose life work had 
 been to arch the unfinished cathedral with his majestic dome. 
 Brunelleschi is imagined speaking near the end of life and 
 filled with retrospections of the dreams he had realized, the 
 rivalries he had overcome, the art and the artists that had 
 given him courage. The still unfinished dome is viewed at 
 one time from his chamber window, at another from a hillside 
 near Florence, and in the interval its interior is climbed on the 
 arm of a friend. An excellent constructive skill is shown by 
 the author in the arrangement of the poem, and he is keenly 
 sensible of the rich associations of mediaeval Florence, as 
 well as to the influence of twenty years of residence in Rome, 
 on the slow ripening of Brunelleschi's art. 
 
 His Pantheon (lines 555-581) and his Forum (lines 461- 
 493) have some of the light and color of imagination's camera; 
 but it is rather in passages like Brunelleschi's self-analysis 
 (lines 186-205) and the final apostrophe to the creations of 
 his brain (lines 1693-1713) that the author moves with the 
 freedom of unconscious skill. One brief passage describes the 
 youthful Donatello. Clarity of vision and perfect adequacy 
 of words are here united, and I will close these impressions 
 by quoting its memorable beauty: 
 
 "A downy velvet barely duskt his lip; 
 His hand jit was already man's; his mind 
 A forthright god' s y creative; and his soul 
 Flower-sweetly childlike, as it still is so" 
 
 THE NATION, New York 
 
 THE "Brunelleschi" of John Galen Howard is an artis 
 tic monologue adapted to three successive views or out 
 looks upon Florence, from the artist's chamber at dawn, from 
 the hollow of the Duomo at noon, and from San Miniato at 
 night. There is a speed and sonority in the lines. . . . The 
 main excellence, however, is a certain heat and vigour in the 
 conception of "Brunelleschi," . . . and the presence of sparkles 
 of animation even in the artist's lightly sketched compatri 
 ots. Mr. Howard . . . has put beyond question his right to 
 try again.
 
 HENRY L. BULLEN 
 
 Librarian Typographic Library and Museum, Jersey City 
 
 THE book is a beautiful example of chaste typography, 
 with all the details of proportion, margins, color, and 
 workmanship perfectly arranged. Simplicity in this book is 
 the fruit of much study and much knowledge of the essen 
 tials of fine printing. This is a book to love as a piece of 
 printing, and to love more with acquaintance. San Francisco 
 may well be proud of possessing a press which can produce 
 typographic masterpieces, and all the work of which is never 
 less than admirable. 
 
 GEORGE HAMLIN FITCH 
 
 in "San Francisco Chronicle" 
 
 A NOTEWORTHY book, because of its literary merit 
 ** and its fine dress, is "Brunelleschi," a poem by John 
 Galen Howard, the eminent architect who was mainly instru 
 mental in inducing the University of California to adopt a 
 systematic plan for building the campus quadrangle. Mr. 
 Howard's architectural abilities have been demonstrated. It 
 remained for this poem to show that he has many of the 
 qualities of a genuine poet. 
 
 RUFUS STEELE 
 
 T CONGRATULATE both you and Brunelleschi. He is 
 doubly blessed in being understood by one who has the 
 rare ability to interpret him so many may understand. Some 
 of your lines are as big as mountains; some of your concep 
 tions as deep as the sea. I thank you for the pleasure I am 
 deriving and which I expect to derive as often as the book 
 is in my hands. And the finest thrill comes from finding a 
 man with such a magnificent conception of the trade to whose 
 bench he himself is bound!
 
 The book was made by Taylor, Nash & Taylor 
 
 of San Francisco, and 480 numbered copies only -were printed 
 
 from type and the type distributed. There are 
 
 but a few copies left for sale 
 
 PRICE, 
 
 .00 
 
 JOHN HOWELL 
 
 Importer & Publisher 
 
 No. 107 GRANT AVENUE, SAN FRANCISCO 
 CALIFORNIA
 
 BRUNELLESCHI
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 A POEM 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN GALEN HOWARD 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 JOHN HOWELL 
 19*3
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1913 
 BY JOHN GALEN HOWARD
 
 TO 
 
 C. D. 
 
 THIS IMAGINED FACE
 
 Within the sixty-nine years of Filippo Erunelleschi 's life, Italy 
 passed from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance. More than three- 
 quarters of a century before the great architect was born his most 
 famous work, the cathedral dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, had 
 been foreshadowed by Arnolfo di Cambio, the original architect 
 of the building; but though the cathedral had, by Erunelleschi ' s 
 time, been mostly finished otherwise, the vast ottagonal space over 
 the crossing still remained without a roof, for lack of an architect 
 with the skill and courage to formulate a plan and carry out the 
 task. 'These and other necessary qualities Erunelleschi alone pos 
 sessed. Actual construction was begun by him twenty-six years 
 before his death, but he was fated to see completed only the main 
 portion of the dome. The crowning lantern was finished in accord 
 ance with his design, years after he was gone, by Michelozzo, once 
 (and always) his pupil, later his rival, and finally his successor. 
 
 The aftion of the piece occupies one fine April day, a brief 
 interval of vigor in Erunelleschi 1 s last illness. The aged archi- 
 tecJ, realizing that death is at hand, has determined upon a last 
 visit to the dome. The first scene is at dawn, in Erunelleschi 's 
 room at the top of his house in Florence, near the cathedral, which 
 is to be seen through the open window. The second scene is at mid 
 day within and on the dome. The third scene is at sunset on the 
 slopes of San Miniato overlooking Florence, with the dome in the 
 middle distance. Throughout the piece Erunelleschi alone speaks.
 
 To climb the summit of the centuries 
 And orb their life in skiey stone !
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 PART I MORNING 
 
 TIME : April, 1446. Daybreak. 
 
 SCENE : An upper room, Florence. 'The Dome is seen beyond. 
 
 PERSONS : Filippo Brunelleschi and his adopted 
 
 son, Andrea. Brunelleschi speaks. 
 
 A- 
 
 T LAST! Now Dawn hath like a serpent slipt 
 Her shroud of murk oblivion and glides 
 Fresh-panoplied with jewels forth from night ! 
 Awake, Andrea ! For today once more, 
 5 After these bedrid asons, would my feet 
 The sky-bound platform of my Dome achieved 
 Enjoy. Upon this day will I go up 
 Into that mountain for a last farewell! 
 
 Withdraw the hangings, that I well may see 
 10 From this dim corner, framed with chambered gloom's 
 Delicious flood of ambient morning air, 
 My blossom-bubble of frail fabric sheen, 
 Atingle with the day, still sweet with dew 
 And rosy thro' dawn's pearl. More fully draw 
 
 I
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 15 The grapy damask from the pouring rays 
 Until its glinting dragons drown in dregs 
 And these used eyes, antiqued with Roman wont, 
 Joy in divine proportion. 
 
 So! Such forms 
 
 20 As I have builded should be ever seen 
 Unless it be beneath the frameless vault 
 Of circumambient ensconcing skies 
 As now thro' arched oblongs exquisite. 
 
 Perfection! 'Tis a beauty such, methinks, 
 
 25 As none but he who made can utterly 
 Delight in ! Ha ! Arnolfo, how would you 
 Lift eyes in prayer could you but see this heaven 
 I 've crowned your space withal ! Could you forgive, 
 In jealousy for thine own striving hand, 
 
 30 My bettering your best ? As well as I 
 
 Forgive your crouching Atlas that his brawn 
 Reeks not of faclure mine, each toiling stone 
 Bone of my bone, and toil of my long toil, 
 To hold my heavens up to Majesty! 
 
 35 Vain for the God-in-us to crave the all 
 Not to derive, or flash like glinting beads 
 On whirlwind skirts of cataracts of power, 
 But in imperious oneness to ordain 
 
 2
 
 MORNING 
 
 And to suffice ! Vain, for at very best 
 
 40 We wilful makers are but shreds and waifs 
 Of urgent godhead, and our mightiest throes 
 Of will creative are but gentlest breaths 
 Out of almighty nostrils. Yet meseems 
 And thus I justify my headiness 
 
 45 God maketh best by human instruments, 
 Thro' secondary acT: of primal power. 
 Nor seas nor mounts nor all His wheeling hosts 
 Outweigh perchance the breath from poets' lips, 
 Or radiance elusive of the light 
 
 50 That quicks dead walls touched deathless by the brush ; 
 How, then, with domes that span with winged stones, 
 Wrought to live purpose by mere acl: of mind, 
 Void space above Christ's holy shrine ? Naught greater 
 God hath created than my blushing Dome, 
 
 55 The virgin breast of Florence! There hath art 
 Touched the high term of beauty. 'Tis of God, 
 Solely of God. He thro' my tangled brain 
 Conceived and did; nor thro' my brain alone 
 But thro' the countless minds whose heritage 
 
 60 Mine hath but garnered, and their teeming house 
 Set now at last in order. Most of all 
 From him ( high heart ) my fountains take their rise 
 Who first laid down the pregnant octagon, 
 
 3
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 And visioned it o'erswept and glorious 
 65 With winged earth-stuff rapturously enskied. 
 
 Timid that profile as it budded first 
 
 Within his mind's of- God-impregnate womb? 
 
 "Timid and paltry" were the words I used 
 
 To hammer home a truth they would not heed, 
 
 70 Those close maestri, with their padlockt heads 
 Nodding and knocking woodenly of rules 
 And precedent, and of the high respecl: 
 Due to Arnolfo's sacred memory. 
 But which is he who most respects the law 
 
 75 He whom the letter circumscribes and kills, 
 Or he within whose soul law's soul strikes root, 
 Bursting the bonds of its enjailing shell 
 To amplify forever? Words I used 
 In heat to clench a white-hot argument 
 
 80 I used with purpose underneath my heat, 
 
 With cold and tempered purpose, for those words 
 Those hateful words applied not to the thought 
 Arnolfo sowed, a seed of the sublime, 
 But to the minds that saw sublimity 
 
 85 Curtailed and wingless, and were satisfied. 
 I spake Arnolfo, and my words drove home. 
 I markt the wincing eyelash and the flinch 
 
 4
 
 MORNING 
 
 Of the touched raw ; and " Florence with a dome 
 Timid and paltry! Inconceivable 
 
 90 And not to be endured ! " they each and all 
 Trod toe on heel in protest. 
 
 So my point 
 
 And the first glory of the Dome were won. 
 For 'tis alone by that uplifting wall 
 95 The form voluptuous above gets wings 
 For soaring free to empyreal power. 
 So is Arnolfo's thought empedestaled, 
 Rapt from closed budhood and out-flowered in joy 
 Amid the blue, unhampered unaware, 
 
 ioo Its will achieved, its yearning in repose. 
 'Tis so forever in the life of thought; 
 Expression goes not home, knows not its ends, 
 If it be not detacht, distinguisht, throned, 
 Set high apart and sacredly enshrined. 
 
 105 'Twas so our Florentine his Comedy 
 
 Put at awe's distance by the awsome form 
 Wherewith he clothed his vision's universe, 
 And, by removing, brought his vision home, 
 A universal knock at each heart's door. 
 
 1 10 Only a few can cluster round a spring 
 Hid among sedges secretly and shy; 
 But hang its gauzy gladness o'er the cliff 
 
 5
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 And each who looks may mark it for his own. 
 Lift thou thy thought into the upper air 
 1 1 5 If thou wouldst speak beyond the reach of death ! 
 
 So bloomed Arnolfo's buddings at my hands. 
 Him hail I grandsire; thro' these clogging veins 
 Still riot gladsome drops I owe to him, 
 When I but think upon him. 'Twas a man, 
 
 1 20 God's image manned with God's first attribute 
 The potent will creative that conceived 
 Yon form of loveliness, and dared its plan. 
 From him most I derive, and have a pride 
 To flow from such a source; 'tis but the mood 
 
 125 That marks me maker when I jealous am 
 
 Of aught that seems to minish mine own strength 
 Or to condition its forth-putting. Now, 
 When my last journey I must soon take up 
 ( Who knoweth to what bourn ? ) and all alone, 
 
 130 As never yet I journeyed, let these words, 
 As if they were my latest breath, sink deep 
 Into thy heart of hearts, beloved son 
 Heart of my heart, tho' wanting blood of mine 
 More closer for my loving, not my lust. 
 
 135 1, whom my Florence placeth up, alone, 
 At last after these fifty years of fight, 
 
 6
 
 MORNING 
 
 Owe all I am to my progenitors, 
 
 Not of the flesh alone nay, surely but 
 
 To those now nameless dead whose godlike stuff 
 
 HO Of the imagination ever fed 
 
 And feeds my inmost being. He who gave 
 His gift in but a breath of living thought 
 Caught from the whisper of a passing Power, 
 Misunderstood or haply misapplied, 
 
 H5 But quick hath given that without which I 
 Had languisht or gone down. In reverence 
 For the unending sacred stream of life 
 Which is but God, I pass my portion on 
 To him who follows after. May my thought 
 
 1 50 Be fruitful and increase in many minds 
 Yet to be born in lands beyond my ken. 
 Haply there shall arise on crest of time 
 Some spirit nay, some spirits packt with power, 
 Who, building on my thought, shall raise up piles 
 
 1 5 5 More mighty than my mightiest, yet give 
 To me the guerdon of their deeds divine. 
 So is my meed most his who went before. 
 
 Ev'n as I speak, see how the April sun, 
 Fresh from his dip in nightly Lethe, springs 
 1 60 Fleet-footed from the hills, his earliest glance 
 
 7
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Kindling the snowy topping of the Dome, 
 Unfinisht yet and webbed with scantling gold 
 That, lacelike, masks the inward loveliness. 
 Now slide the rays adown the swelling mound 
 
 165 A lover's touch that swift with young desire 
 Caresses and compels voluptuous form. 
 From out the dusk of dawning, sweet emerge 
 Chaste raptures of pale marble, veining soft 
 The roseleaf-luscious languor of that hill 
 
 1 7 All virginal. And now the eager light 
 Hath like a lover swept the immaculate 
 And taken all ... as Christ, our light of lights 
 And days' eternal day, would sweep to Him 
 The budding ripeness of His mystic bride. 
 
 175 'Tis time I left this palsied pallet. Now, 
 And for the last time oh! I feel it snap 
 My fragile heart-strings shall I mount that height 
 Whereto my life hath been pledged utterly. 
 No more with pride imperial shall I set 
 
 1 80 These feet upon the rung to the sky's gates, 
 Nor o'er these lips may ever burst again 
 The voice of fiat ; but a suppliant, 
 Kneeling the steps of Christward penitence, 
 I will up-crawl, a worm before the Throne. 
 
 8
 
 MORNING 
 
 185 Even to rise from this strait couch I need 
 Thy arm, Andrea; and thy filial word 
 'Tis strange how deep its sound doth penetrate 
 And how it easeth me. When I am gone 
 'Tis thou I would have make my monument; 
 
 1 90 'Tis so perchance thou hast a chance to live. 
 Nay, be not vext; we be no flatterers, 
 To scum salt hearts with sweetness, thou and I. 
 What I to thee, say thou unto the world; 
 What I of thee, say thou of me abroad, 
 
 195 Nor paint me beauteous; but as thou hast seen, 
 So show me forth. It is one half my pride 
 That I have won, being but what I am, 
 A pint-pot scrub, so full of cranky whims 
 And desperate abridgments that all maids 
 
 200 Have said me nay, till, in the lapse of time, 
 My heart hath turned unto the like of thee, 
 And made me father all vagaries thine. 
 It were quaint justice, shouldst thou live thro' me 
 In thy presentment, since thou lack'st my blood 
 
 205 Yet call'st me father. Make my monument ! 
 
 And while thou help'st me to put on these stuffs 
 More joyous for the sackcloth of my soul 
 (Which men must spy not) I'll beguile the hour 
 
 9
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 With memories; for I have never told 
 2 10 Even to thee one half the struggles deep 
 
 Wherethro' I 've waded to this shore of years. 
 
 Nor shall I now, nor could I ; yet, in part, 
 
 Since thou must make me live when I am dead, 
 
 'Tis fitting thou shouldst glimpse my battle-field 
 215 Before we knew ourselves as son and sire 
 
 In the calm evening of my agony, 
 
 That smoothed the pathways of thy morning life. 
 
 Thou know'st my model for Lorenzo's doors; 
 Thou know'st my model for yon soaring Dome; 
 
 220 Betwixt those two there yawned a score of years 
 Empty of all achievement visible 
 But packt with gnawing hell. I knew my power, 
 For it was very I I breathed and drank, 
 Waked, slept and lived it. In my deepest soul 
 
 225 There was no cranny but was crank with it. 
 And in my mind imagination still 
 And sleeplessly did live with gaping space 
 O'ercrowned and perfected. An instinct 'twas, 
 More not-to-be-denied than roused lust 
 
 230 A lust indeed instinctive and more hot, 
 More exigent, than fleshly longings that 
 With a consuming summons called me on 
 
 10
 
 MORNING 
 
 To close vast spaces in. 'Twas born in me 
 As hunger in all creatures, nor less fierce. 
 
 235 But I recall, as men recall first love, 
 
 The hour when first in fire from out the blue 
 The bolt of conscious will to live or die 
 For that desire to make it good smote thro' 
 To gushing springs of being. 
 
 240 But a lad, 
 
 A mean, frail shred of boyhood, was I then 
 Ten years or suchlike. All the town was mad 
 With joy and with acclaim that Giotto's tower, 
 That half a century was building, was topt out. 
 
 245 And I, with other urchins, half a score 
 Lorenzo one of them of course slipt by 
 The jealous wardens and made holiday 
 All up the dizzy wonder to the roof. 
 Once there, the keeper panting in pursuit, 
 
 250 We rompt around the hanging parapet 
 
 In shrillest glee, with taunts scarce circumspect 
 
 For him who followed fast; till finally 
 
 He herded all save but Lorenzo's self 
 
 And me down thro' the scuttle. We escaped 
 
 255 That ignominy by a sudden dodge 
 
 And found ourselves alone in the pale blue. 
 
 I I
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 We both had kindled with the kindled town, 
 
 And in our hearts there throbbed a riot joy 
 
 That Giotto's genius now was culminate 
 260 Full two score years since he was in his grave. 
 
 The people's exaltation scarce was less 
 
 Than when not long ago we capt the Dome; 
 
 And we small slips of callow artistry 
 
 Were fired with sense of genius. Scarcely friends 
 265 Were we, even as children too unlike 
 
 Our natures were to coalesce in love; 
 
 But we were friendly till that tower-top hour. 
 
 There our ways parted. And they never since 
 
 Have met but they have crost. 
 270 From that great height 
 
 We lookt together o'er the bristling town, 
 
 Sawed with the holds of lordlings, and in pride 
 
 Each told upon his fingers each proud house 
 
 He held allegiance unto. Hardly once 
 275 My score agreed with his. My friends and his 
 
 Might have inhabited two separate worlds, 
 
 So far apart our standards and our kin. 
 
 Boys take these things more seriously than men, 
 
 Even in Florence, and incipient heat 
 280 Burned in each reddening cheek, despisal's flag. 
 
 It was when we had warmed to boast and taunt, 
 
 12
 
 MORNING 
 
 Boy-fashion, that we wheeled and o'er the church 
 Alongside bent our downward gaze. At odds 
 In family allegiance, more at odds 
 
 285 We were, and came to fisticuffs, thereon. 
 
 To me the yawning chasm, that markt the dome 
 
 Arnolfo had imagined, was a lure, 
 
 A challenge, a delight; to him a snare, 
 
 A fearsome bungle worse, disaster sure, 
 
 290 If it indeed with stone must be o'erspanned. 
 Then sprang my fate to saddle and I cried, 
 "'Tis cowardice to drivel such a lie! 
 Think you Arnolfo knew not what he did 
 When he foresaw that gaping hole? I know 
 
 295 It can be vaulted, and I'll do it, too ! " 
 
 'Twas sixty years ago, well nigh; yet now 
 I still can feel my cheek grow hot and cold 
 With that unreasoned and divine control 
 Which hath sustained me ever, but first then 
 
 300 Made manifest my business. 'Twas Christ's will 
 That I should heal that emptiness! And when, 
 In after time, the years dragged on and on, 
 Defeat succeeding failure, and naught moved 
 That cumbersome machine the Opera 
 
 305 Or, moved, they did but jangle their minds' chains,
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Creakt dry old catchless cogs, and spat out dust- 
 I oft have cast me on my bended knees 
 And sought new guidance; and as oft His hand 
 Have felt uplift me till my doubt was done. 
 
 3 10 But this was later boys have little care 
 But that their wills will carry; as for me, 
 As boy I never doubted. My first doubt 
 Came at same hand as my first certainty 
 Lorenzo's but not doubt anent the Dome, 
 
 3 1 5 Nor doubt so much about myself as him. 
 When he and I lockt horns over the bronze 
 That was to seal the doorless baptistry, 
 
 
 
 Then first I saw him as a power. Till then, 
 All thro' our prentice days, I 'd thought of him 
 
 320 As but a plodding potterer, a fond 
 And fearful searcher-out of vanities 
 Who never knew his mind, and took the world 
 Into his confidence to fix him one. 
 But when the models for the gates were shown, 
 
 325 Our two Lorenzo's and my own stood out 
 Together, peers incomparable; so 
 The town and all did say. And some inclined, 
 And not a few, to mine. But in my heart 
 I knew that his was finer, and with pain 
 
 14
 
 MORNING 
 
 330 I marveled wherefore. How could such a mind, 
 So feeble in conception, indirect, 
 And blown about by every gust that came, 
 Produce a thing so exquisite? It balkt 
 My being. And 'twas from that hour I knew 
 
 335 Not force can work the marvel but the long 
 Inveterate travail of the soul. I saw 
 My Abraham a pattern of myself 
 Hot to the deed, e'en odious. Odious thought, 
 To minds like mine, that they must clip will's wings 
 
 340 To plod in patience the long paths to power, 
 And know the bloody scourging of defeat, 
 Ere they may make the mile-stone of success. 
 That price for one thing gladly would I pay; 
 The Dome, my idol, that I 'd buy with life ! 
 
 345 But when the masters offered half the task 
 Of the contested bronzes to myself 
 To work at with Lorenzo I refused, 
 Too filled with loathing for his niggling ways, 
 Too filled with awe at his divine result. 
 
 3 50 "His is the best; give it to him!" I said. 
 "He is a sculptor; I an architect!" 
 This I had added, but my soul was sore 
 With its first search by doubt and questioning.
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 I was a boy then still oh, twenty-four, 
 
 355 But tardy riping. Architects take time. 
 And I was yet to strive a score of years 
 Ere I was let put shoulder to the task 
 I lived but to accomplish. Had I known, 
 My patience might have flagged; but eager hope 
 
 360 Shone gorgeous from my fog of doubt ; I knew, 
 Better for my defeat, the only road 
 For me to victory. An architect 
 Essential to the core was I, as sure 
 As was Ghiberti sculptor ; nay, as sure 
 
 365 As Donatello was so, even then, 
 
 In careless ladhood, recognized and loved 
 As such by me and cherisht; and as sure 
 As was my dear Masaccio painter, then 
 Nay, on that instant, mayhap being born, 
 
 370 So soon to flame to genius most divine, 
 A beauteous meteor in our morning skies, 
 So soon to sink and vanish ere the day, 
 Far sowing sky-seed. 
 
 Donatello then 
 
 375 As much chagrined, more than as much elate, 
 As I at the strife's ending, for his model gained, 
 For such a child, proud praise struck palm to palm 
 With me, his elder by a half, that we would go 
 
 16
 
 MORNING 
 
 And seek art's fountain-head together. Word 
 380 Came down the wind, from none knows whence, 
 
 That the old ways were wanting. All the air 
 
 Was rife with spirit not to be defined 
 
 As of new dawn upon the bleakness past. 
 
 And we, in whom the very heart of spring 
 385 Leapt riotous with promise, strapt our packs 
 
 And made off madly down the lane to Rome. 
 
 Scarce we lookt back, or if our eyes reglimpsed 
 
 The ancient cincture with its pride of towers 
 
 This withed fagot buncht with beetling threat 
 390 'Twas not with wish to linger, but as one 
 
 Who from a loved and longed-for mistress goes 
 
 To hazard fortune for her sooner gone 
 
 The sooner come again nor lets his love 
 
 Slacken his pace wide-worldwards. 
 395 What to gain 
 
 Had we in mind up-treasured ? Scarce we knew. 
 
 We but obeyed an instinct sharp as fate 
 
 That prickt us onward to an unknown goal. 
 
 Youth, and the restless anguish of defeat, 
 400 The sense of boundless spaces and of power 
 
 Unmeasured and immeasurable, life, 
 
 Love, faith, and God these filled our consciousness. 
 
 Rough was the way; our purse made Friday-fare;
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Our packs tho' slender were too sore a load 
 405 ( We wisht our packs and purses might exchange ) ; 
 Yet we were joyous as two larks in spring 
 Loosed to the boundless ether, and our song 
 Piped heartfelt from high blue of times to be. 
 So hastened we, scarce witting, on to Rome. 
 
 410 And Rome repaid! Arnolfo was my sire, 
 But Rome the milky dam that gave me suck. 
 And Donatello oh, the rapture keen 
 To watch him blossom in that garth of eld ! 
 A downy velvet barely duskt his lip 
 
 415 His hand, it was already man's; his mind 
 A forthright god's, creative; and his soul 
 Flower-sweetly childlike, as it still is so. 
 We lived as one. No nuptial bonds more close 
 Could wed two natures than our friendship bound 
 
 420 His heart and mine. We held each other's soul. 
 No deeps, no backs or eddies of our lives 
 Kept we o'er-glozed from each other's view. 
 And as the years went on he kept me young, 
 Then and thereafter; my imprisoned soul, 
 
 425 Denied expression's vent, had grizzled else 
 And packt to crabbed hardness, impotent 
 To wield the power itself conceived and was. 
 
 18
 
 MORNING 
 
 Love can no more than keep the channels free 
 Wherethro' may life tumultuous pour its flood. 
 
 430 And I not Donatello only but 
 
 All Rome was mine, and all the boundless world 
 That was Rome. Of the heady cup of time, 
 Ripened within her deep-delved vaults, I drank 
 Deep and divinely till my soul was filled. 
 
 435 Wherever crumbling fragment broke the sod 
 In desert purlieus of the shrunken town 
 I grubbed and prodded with a fevered zeal 
 To have its secrets, as a dog will dig 
 To lay his fangs upon a cherisht bone 
 
 440 Stored ripe in burial. Little scaped my flair ; 
 Tho' oft as if a ghoul who sought in graves 
 Unholy treasure I was driven forth 
 With harsh reviling ; but as oft returned, 
 Until, with endless work, enormous store 
 
 445 Of measured pelf I had laid by rich stuff 
 Wherewith I builded up anew in mind 
 August antiquity. 
 
 How 'twas I lived, 
 Those roofless winters long, I hardly know, 
 
 450 So distanced are they and so blued with life. 
 My patrimony of a piece of land
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 I'd sold when first I went from Florence all 
 That I possessed save meager scraps of wage 
 I got from tasks that famine found at hand 
 
 455 To tide me over from one hungry spell 
 Until the next. Empty I workt for wage, 
 And filled I workt for glory, giving all, 
 All of my best, to living with the forms, 
 In crumbling and dishonored fragments hoar, 
 
 460 That clothed the ancient world, and glorified 
 Its all existence. 
 
 Oft when evening fell 
 And the encircling hills were aureoled 
 With sunset's flame, imperially clad 
 
 465 In purple from the deepening west, I walkt 
 In the dim dingle where the Forum lay 
 Already dipt in gloom as if its dreams 
 Of other days had brimmed it with a draft 
 Of bitter-sweetness. Round me cattle browsed 
 
 470 And silence was, where once the Caesars sate 
 The throne of earth, amid the clang of arms 
 And babble of unnumbered multitudes, 
 Prankt with all gorgeousness from all the ends 
 Of prostrate empire. From the sweeping turf, 
 
 475 From tufted copses, rose into the dusk 
 
 Vast ghostly columns giants, half their height 
 
 20
 
 MORNING 
 
 Awful up-turreting, who stationed there 
 Consoleless, as unsaviored patriarchs 
 Kept state, imprisoned yet in limbo, ere 
 
 480 With love divine Christ stoopt to lift them out 
 Who else were pinioned there eternally, 
 Nor dead nor living, yet both dead and live. 
 And in the eerie gloaming I could deem 
 Those mighty forms out-raised to me their hands, 
 
 485 Mute supplicants for my compassion. "We," 
 
 I mused them yearning, "are not blotcht with slime 
 That cankered empire; wherefore be we doomed 
 To stay discarded? Lift us to the light. 
 Our souls are heirs of beauty's golden prime, 
 
 490 And we bear message of that time serene 
 To future ages. List thou to our word 
 And speak it for us to the world. It waits! " 
 
 Like the rich wreckage of a treasure-fleet 
 Engulft beneath the ravening seas of time 
 
 495 With but the mastheads wind-bleacht, I divined 
 The wealth that lay corroding in sunk holds, 
 An age's ransom; and I set me on 
 More wilful to redeem to daily use 
 The wasting beauty. But of all the vast 
 
 500 Innumerably thronging vestiges 
 
 2 I
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Of ancient grandeur, two most filled my soul 
 With wonder and my mind with endless zeal 
 To have their hearts' whole secret out, and mine. 
 As never elsewhere, surely, 'tis within 
 
 505 The Amphitheater's o'erwhelming sweep 
 Conception grasps the miracle of Rome. 
 Within its awsome valley, walled about 
 By mountain ledges shelving to the blue, 
 Chaliced all empire. Whiles, at burning noon, 
 
 510 I sought the umbrage of the corridors 
 Which circle endlessly that vast ellipse 
 To scape the oppressive awe that reigned and smote 
 Within the roofless cinclure, as old wine 
 Had sod all conscience with cupt day, until, 
 
 515 In anguish of sun-drunkenness, I fled 
 
 To vaulted twilight. Thence again, from dreams 
 Of glorious eld, refresht would I come forth 
 To witness Evening at her altar rites, 
 Coping the chalice with a filmy pall 
 
 520 Of gentian shadow like a brooding wing. 
 And whilom, when from out the mystic bowl 
 Brimmed with the purple sacrament of night 
 My mind had drunk oblivion, would my soul 
 Espouse in dreams the soul of ancientry. 
 
 525 'Tis from those spousals' sacred unison 
 
 22
 
 MORNING 
 
 Have sprung these children fresh wherewith is sown 
 By us our Florence. Mother of our seed, 
 The Theater hath stood for worldly power 
 In spirit beauty, and hath vased the Word 
 530 That Rome too was a vessel of the shrine, 
 Whence after-time shall taste the sacrament. 
 
 i 
 
 Rome's sacred grandeur most the Theater, 
 
 But most Rome's unity the Pantheon 
 
 Symbols. Eternity ! None other form 
 535 Of human handiwork so speaks that thought 
 
 With the unendedness that rounds it! Rome! 
 
 None other thought so keeps her puissance 
 
 As doth Eternity! One only creature 
 
 Of the almighty Mind, the ends of earth 
 540 Together all were gathered up within 
 
 One fascicle of governance, that there, 
 
 More certain of fruition, might be sown, 
 
 And endlessly disseminated, seed 
 
 Of life eternal. Prescient of its fate 
 545 As emblem of the empire, both of man 
 
 And of essential Wisdom, pagan priests 
 
 Did sanctify that temple to gods seven 
 
 Who o'er their darkness shed foreshadowing gleams 
 
 Of very God to Time, to Power, to Swiftness, 
 
 2 3
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 550 Beauty, and Chastity, and, prince of these, 
 Love, and the Sword that Love is girt withal. 
 And so it stands epitome of Christ 
 And of His Church, in chaste perfection framed 
 And rounded into one with endless things. 
 
 555 Crumbled, without, and craggy from the storms 
 Of wasting winters and the ruthless hand 
 Of spoilers, scarce the eye discerns at first 
 A fearsome beauty, tho' the gracious porch 
 Prepares and wins one on to enter straight. 
 
 560 But like a saintly nature, cloistered close 
 
 'Neath sackcloth and a front of haggard want, 
 The spirit harbors there within, safe-shrined, 
 Sweet, and abundant. Swiftly, from the port, 
 Or ere the ponderous bronze hath clanged behind, 
 
 565 The entrant halts, with awe confounded. . . . God ! 
 This is Thy House ! . . . A cavern splendid, vast, 
 Aflood with golden mellowness of gloom, 
 Clothed with all sumptuous substance of the earth ! 
 Around, no window breaks the stately file 
 
 570 Of niche and column, columned niche and wall ; 
 But from above alone there swims the day, 
 A cirque of plumbless ether, thro' the dome 
 In benediction, like the eye of God 
 That looks serenely to the heart of things. 
 
 24
 
 MORNING 
 
 575 Oft have I seen a sheaf of streaming rays 
 
 Pour thro' that sky-space from its fount unseen 
 And down the coffered facets of the vault 
 Strike seals of flaming gold as if the hand 
 Of the Almighty had reacht down and touched 
 
 580 To liquid life of fire the senseless stone, 
 Senseless no longer, but a sentient soul 
 Wrought inly. 
 
 There it was I gathered up, 
 To treasure in my inmost being, funds 
 
 585 Of inspiration and of reverence 
 
 I else had wanted for the mighty task 
 My mind made headway unto. Deep I searcht 
 Into its secret making. How, and why, 
 And in what sequence were the elements 
 
 590 That made that greatness, wrought by feeble hands 
 To power and beauty ? If I gloated long 
 To find the chaste proportions of an arch 
 Or fix the spirit beauty of a shaft 
 Just so much lengthened, so much viewless curve, 
 
 595 So burgeoned upward for the final grace 
 
 How more, bethink thee, was I rapt and pledged 
 To master mastery in the mighty dome ! 
 
 To build more beautiful was not for man;
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 But might I reach its beauty? Not for me 
 600 The answer to that question. 'Twas perchance 
 A form less noble that I had to deal 
 Withal for must the circle stand alone 
 As form of full perfection. And perchance 
 Some freer hand, less loyal to the scheme 
 605 Already sanctioned and imbedded deep 
 In fundamental feeling, had devised 
 Some fresh transition to the perfect form. 
 I know not; for my mind was fixed fast 
 On the solution of the hardy task 
 610 Arnolfo set. Its hardness made its charm 
 
 More subtle and more potent. And the end 
 See! it is beautiful and all my best 
 Have I poured out, thro' all, thro' all my life 
 To make it so. I will not question it! 
 
 615 But oh, the length of travail to that end; 
 
 To but the putting shoulder to the work; 
 
 To but the privilege to show my plan; 
 
 To but the right to speak before the Board; 
 
 To but the basis whereon I might speak; 
 620 To but the power to make that basis sure ! 
 
 'Twas into that abyss the years still poured 
 
 The while I naught produced that might have lived 
 
 26
 
 MORNING 
 
 Had I been taken off nothing that lasts 
 Save friends and loving pupils. Caesar so 
 
 625 Saw life pass by and leave him in the shade, 
 Whilst others pluckt their fruit and ate of it. 
 Men who are masterful beyond the bounds 
 Of their small epochs aye must wait till Time 
 Hath given the glass the allotted turnings slow 
 
 630 Ere to their stage the entrance-ways are cleared. 
 But meanwhile, thinkest theirs a grateful task, 
 To wait and watch the train of life go by 
 And eat their hearts out for the chance to live ? 
 I saw Lorenzo swim the cresting wave 
 
 635 Of sunshine and success, and many more 
 Less gifted win a worthy place just claims 
 Put forth to honor's lasting name while I, 
 Conscious of greatness, kept the shadowy wings 
 And dull despised background of the scene. 
 
 640 Those were the years my heart had aged and tired, 
 
 Along with cooling blood and grizzling hairs, 
 
 Had I not felt me richly blossoming 
 
 In Donatello and Masaccio. 
 
 They spoke my message in the countless ways 
 645 The finger cannot follow, pouring forth 
 
 A freshening flood of thought not theirs the less 
 
 27
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 For being pregnant with my spirit, ripe 
 With a sane wisdom that had ne'er obtained 
 In their unreasoned and impulsive power 
 
 650 Elsewise. Their essence was eternal youth 
 That knows no trammels and no even pace. 
 I steadied their swift hands. I trimmed their sails 
 In dangerous flaws. Well I, Filippo, played 
 Lorenzo's r6le to their Filippo's! See? 
 
 655 1 kept them careful, for the vital sap 
 They kept alert in me. 
 
 Supple and sweet, 
 
 I hope, a little those two kept my heart 
 By their large understanding and rich power 
 
 660 Of swift sure sympathy that glimpsed an end, 
 No sooner shadowed by my first essay. 
 They trailed my mind- ways by their insight keen. 
 Their live encouragement establisht rock 
 Under frail fancy's outworks, till defense 
 
 665 Took shape aggressive of fixt purposes 
 
 That lookt cock-sure unyieldingness no more 
 To minds that gallopt up, and off. They say 
 I'm set, that nothing budges me; nor guess 
 How I have lived but by encouragement 
 
 670 I cannot breathe else. But the type of mind 
 Far alienate from mine, which little brings 
 
 28
 
 MORNING 
 
 To stir my consciousness, which little pricks 
 The spur of my presentment, I oppose 
 With stolid fixedness. And then some say 
 
 675 That I am wilful and contrarious. 
 
 Will were not will were it not wilful! Will 
 Were needful to a waiting task, and mine 
 Hath mostly been but waiting. 
 
 But enough 
 
 680 Of such philosophy! 'Twas back and forth 
 
 Thro' twenty arduous years, 'twixt schoolmate Rome 
 And mistress Florence, ere the dangling prize 
 Plumpt in my pocket, and e'en yet with thorns 
 Thereto that kept it unenjoyable. 
 
 685 Lorenzo, yoked with me in equal power 
 A doomed duumvirate! In earlier days 
 I had refused to weight him with my hand 
 Upon his shoulder whilst he made his gates. 
 I knew the folly of such harnessing, 
 
 690 And while it galled me gave him liberal rein 
 To win his laurels. Now my score of years 
 Must go to feed his emptiness. 
 
 No more 
 Knew he of building than his potter's clay. 
 
 695 He had been taskt at the minutest things 
 Gates, glass, and gildings for the altar-top; 
 
 2 9
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 And ne'er his eye had scanned a broader space 
 Than his two hands ; or, if it scanned, with fear. 
 Ah! but he'd had the wisdom sane-insane 
 
 700 To join the Guild of Builders to what end 
 
 Requires more wisdom than I Ve gleaned to guess ; 
 For I think he intrigued not for the Dome 
 He feared it, rather. But he'd not the grace 
 When, as Filippo's opposite and so 
 
 705 The one most like to chasten, he was drawn 
 To yoke-up with me flatly to refuse, 
 As decency required. A useless pall 
 Of lead hung on me was he from the first ; 
 And had it not been like the great refusal 
 
 710 To cast aside the task that heaven had set, 
 And peevishly to mope because full sway 
 I could not have, I should have said them nay. 
 " Or he or I ; not both ! " But for that he 
 Was useless, and well knew him so, and that 
 
 7 1 5 1 knew that canny time would show it out, 
 I took what I could get, one half the laud 
 And twice the task to count his presence there 
 At least the burthen of the task itself! 
 So we were off at last. 
 
 720 But now let's off 
 
 And scale my mountain wonder ! Once again 
 
 30
 
 MORNING 
 
 Ere they cease breathing, glad these nostrils mine 
 Shall scent the azure gardens of the sky 
 From that high hollow hill, my bloom of blooms 
 725 The wonder-blossom of this town of flowers 
 Fairest corolla of this flower of towns !
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 PART II NOON 
 
 TIME: 1 'he same. Midday. 
 
 SCENE : Within and on the Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. 
 
 PERSONS: Brunelleschi and Andrea ; and later Donatella 
 
 and the workmen on the Dome. Brunelleschi speaks. 
 
 I 
 
 S DONATELLO there? I count on him 
 To give a note of gala to this last 
 Brief junket to the clouds. Astonishing 
 
 730 How he keeps up that spirit ! To be sure 
 
 He hath but three score spring-tides to his name, 
 And that 's still April if the wind is right 
 (And you are Donatello) e'en suppose 
 You have two hearts, and one of them mine own, 
 
 735 To wean from winter! April sure '11 be May, 
 With him along not even last good-byes 
 Could hold out showery 'gainst that sunniness. 
 On, then ! Belike we '11 find him at the top, 
 Where suns belong. Not earth could keep him down. 
 
 740 He floats upon the world like buoyant gold 
 On quicksilver. 
 
 33
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 How steep these steps, to feet 
 With loads less light, prickt on by will so e'er 
 To win the azure! Three score years and nine 
 
 745 Had never ventured to essay them, but 
 
 That two score planned them, and that three score's gone 
 Already to their summit, blithe as morn. 
 Yet nor so endless many nor so steep 
 As steps impalpable I clomb of yore 
 
 750 To give these day! I've earned them, and I've paid 
 High value for their steepness, o'er and o'er 
 Redoing in the undoing dark the deed 
 Each day had ended. 
 
 Let me catch my breath, 
 
 755 Ere we climb on, behind this parapet. 
 
 Again I shall not see thee, Florence, lie 
 
 In languid loveliness beneath, thy towers 
 
 Reversing in perspective, vanisht down 
 
 And reaching earthwards, where I soon shall lie. 
 
 760 How I have loved thee ! Me no nuptial joys 
 
 Have weaned from oneness with thy spirit's flower, 
 Out-blossomed from my bosom. Only thee 
 My heart hath yearned unto. Only thee 
 My soul hath known in rapture. Only thee! 
 
 765 Take thou this child that hath been born of us 
 
 34
 
 NOON 
 
 In spirit spousals, and upon thy breast 
 Bear it forever as my pledge of troth 
 In Heaven. All my being be up-caught 
 And mystic-corporate therein with thine, 
 770 A thing eternal, and forever thou! 
 
 And now the Stygian narrows of the stair 
 Pent sidewise upward 'twixt the double vault, 
 O'erarcht and buttressed round and overthwart! 
 A breathing at each peep-hole mind you that! 
 775 Ha! Glimpse by glimpse we'll sum our Florence up, 
 Minutest miniatures of beauty all. 
 
 First, over there's Palazzo Vecchio, 
 The hoar old war-horse, armored cap-a-pie 
 And shadowy-visored, thrusting high his fist 
 780 Fierce-clencht and mailed, ready for the blow. 
 
 And now Or San Michele, in surprise, 
 
 Lifts eyebrows o'er all shoulders round about, 
 
 As who should watch, what tho' the neighbors drowse. 
 
 Then there's sweet Arno, lady lakelet slim, 
 785 Aslipping 'neath her bridges thro' the town 
 As sleek as satin with her silvery smile. 
 
 35
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 And here we have a band of citizens 
 Sky-lofty turrets sullenly athreat, 
 Each scowling at the other. Still is War 
 790 Our patron spirit tho' o'erwreathed with flowers. 
 
 But stay ! Our fateful Chain ! I nearly bruised 
 My head against your elbows, my good friend. 
 A trifle rude to punch your papa so ! 
 'Twas I that fathered you remember well! 
 
 795 And what a botch Lorenzo made when he 
 Pretended he knew all there was to know 
 Of such as chains ! We should have had our Dome 
 About our heads if he had had his way. 
 Oh, wondrous days that dropt a farthing dip 
 
 800 Into the bushel-basket of the Board ! 
 I didn't have to make believe sick, as, 
 In dudgeon, some of them made out I did. 
 I was beyond endurance sick of him, 
 Lorenzo, and of seeing him about 
 
 805 And looking wise and careful and as if 
 It all depended on him, when the most 
 He ever ventured was to hem and haw 
 When I was by, and then to put a spoke 
 In every wheel behind my back. Why can't 
 
 8 10 A man know what he's fit for? He can make, 
 
 36
 
 NOON 
 
 If there 's but time, a marvel of a door. 
 I J m free to say the one he 's making now 
 (And has been making since I can recall) 
 Will far outdo the best was ever cast 
 
 815 If he but keep it up. But as for domes 
 
 Well, domes are not his art, and mine they are. 
 He wouldn't utter word when I was ill, 
 He was so frightened let the time drag on, 
 With nothing building, till the men were wild 
 
 820 To get ahead and the whole town was dazed 
 To see the work stop short, and all the crew 
 Idle and boozing round the place. You see 
 The work had reacht a stage most critical. 
 The overhanging, inward, of the stone 
 
 825 Was now so great the men all feared to work 
 (No wonder, too) unless a scaffolding 
 And hoardings were set up. And then again 
 The binding-chain to keep the upper works, 
 Once built, from thrusting out in vast collapse 
 
 830 Must now be placed. A subtle problem each. 
 
 When once I got about again I saw 
 
 The time had come for action. All the town 
 
 Was rife with rumors most discreditable. 
 
 The Dome was doomed -nay, damned. The very men 
 
 37
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 835 On whom I most depended were at point 
 Of mutiny, infect with panic fear 
 Even to mount the works reflection sure 
 Of poor Lorenzo's feebleness. Rule men 
 By vacillation? Never! Certainty 
 
 840 That is your cue for masters. But be sure 
 Your certainty is safe else failure sure! 
 Not needful best, but good the chance to prove 
 What's best will come only when all is done, 
 The thing already judged as right. Not art 7 
 
 845 1 'm speaking of, but action. Action then, 
 Not art, was needful. And I acted soon. 
 " You see," I said, " the folly of two men 
 As masters of one task. Nor he nor I 
 Is master while we both are so. Divide 
 
 850 The work. There are two tasks at hand. Give him 
 His choice." 
 
 Lorenzo-like he chose the chain 
 And lucky 'twas. The scaffold was the road 
 To instant credit and to confidence, 
 
 855 Tho' but the moment's makeshift; while the chain 
 Scarce mattered for the nonce, tho' pregnant 'twas 
 With future fate for good or ill a dome 
 Or a disaster. 
 
 Half an hour 's enough 
 
 38
 
 NOON 
 
 860 (When you have travailed half a life before 
 
 To meet that half-hour) to show forth a scheme, 
 And match with manhood. Scarcely that, it was, 
 Before my men were eager to begin, 
 So simple and so safe my method was, 
 
 865 So entertaining in its childlikeness, 
 
 Like most big things. And while Lorenzo sweat 
 About one foolish lap of chain, we slung 
 Our scaffold quite around, a perfect trough 
 To work in. 
 
 870 But the chain? The Dome hung now 
 
 'Twixt heaven and earth 'twixt fortune and the grave 
 And I was taskless, all my men dismissed, 
 Waiting until Lorenzo's work was done. 
 You see the situation. I must be 
 
 875 Called in, advised with; and on such a thing 
 As he had botcht but one report could make 
 'Twas worthless. Easy as I might I was 
 On old Lorenzo; easy could not be. 
 He was a good man in the wrongest place. 
 
 880 I set him down as lightly as I could 
 To his relief, I 'm sure. Tho' he took care 
 To draw his stipend for a year or so 
 His ghost was laid. No more he haunted me. 
 
 39
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 And big he showed most unexpected big 
 885 When later on he let me lend a hand 
 At casting his great bronzes; ne'er a word 
 To sting regret within me to remorse. 
 Take thou not queer Lorenzo for a cad; 
 He 's good-sort human, inwardly deep in ! 
 
 890 One other battle royal must I win 
 
 Ere the Dome reacht its zenith. Some my men, 
 Pampered with adulation by the crowd 
 ( For now the Dome so marcht they thought themselves, 
 And were thought of as heroes on the pave 
 
 895 Lordly aristocrats of labor), some 
 
 Began to say, "The Dome is ours. We hold 
 In our right hands its making. Not again, 
 Should we drop out, could they our places fill. 
 And not again, when this is finisht, we 
 
 900 Shall chance upon its like, for livelihood. 
 Who locketh not his larder soon shall lack. 
 Let us but smite now while the iron is hot 
 And reap our harvest!" Mingled metaphors 
 That matcht their logic lame! I felt the storm 
 
 905 In the close sullen weather of their look 
 When for the ordering of the hourly task 
 I voiced my will; tho' I no notice took 
 
 40
 
 NOON 
 
 Lest the storm break perchance it might blow o'er. 
 But naught save thunder eases thunder-heads; 
 910 So they played Jove a while, and thundered sore. 
 
 But architecture is not solitaire. 
 
 The Dome was not my making, nor was't theirs. 
 
 It was the town's. And deep in principle 
 
 I saw their claims a menace, even tho' 
 
 915 The letter of their law seem righteous. 
 
 There ! 
 
 Thro' this last loophole ere we gain the top, 
 See you the lift serene of Giotto's tower ? 
 'Twas there I poised my purpose. Oft and oft, 
 
 920 When the crowd crampt me and I needed air 
 Of solitude to breathe me to myself, 
 I climbed the lonely terrace of the tower 
 To see things whole, unfrittered by detail, 
 As one might pray upon a mountain-top. 
 
 925 First, as a child, I there had glimpsed the Dome 
 Achieved me dedicate to its achievement. 
 Fateful perspective! So I gained a force 
 Of singleness and wholeness always there 
 On the sky-platform. So it stands to me 
 
 930 Supreme in purpose loftiest poise of power, 
 And fairest marriage of the earth with heaven 
 
 41
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Man's hand hath coupled, as *t were hand of God's. 
 An hour in skydom cleansed my turbid mind 
 That it pellucid ran and forceful. Straight 
 
 935 Across the interval 'twixt mount and mount 
 I flung my manifesto oh, not heard 
 Of course by those who swarmed the scaffoldings, 
 But thus I eased me and a breathless hour 
 Made good my wind-tossed challenge. They must go ! 
 
 940 Their claims were canceled. Florence was the source 
 Whence sprang the undertaking, and her weal 
 Was paramount. I would not see her held 
 And throttled by a gang of thugs whose palms 
 Were itching but for lucre. They must go ! 
 
 945 No explanation gave I, for he saps 
 
 The argument of force who salves the blow 
 With vain palaver; simply they must go! 
 
 This was a Saturday. On Monday morn 
 
 I had a crew of masons at the Dome 
 950 Gathered in secret on the Sunday night 
 
 And pledged to silence till they came to work. 
 
 Before the week was up the game was won; 
 
 My old crestfallen foreman came to beg 
 
 For reinstatement with the other men. 
 955 And was I glad to get them back? At wage 
 
 42
 
 NOON 
 
 Lower than they had got before the fight! 
 They 've never bothered since. 
 
 But hist ! I hear 
 
 Their voices as we near their height, down thro' 
 960 The hatchway floating. Bless 'em, how they sing 
 At the blest work like larks amid the blue 
 The thugs I kept from pelf at point of sword ! 
 They are my very hands, did they but know. 
 Ah, but they need my hand to keep 'em so ! 
 
 965 One more good breathing and we are arrived. 
 
 The air is hereabouts more heavenly pure 
 
 Than even nature's mountain-summits shed 
 
 Upon the jaded spirit. Mary's fane 
 
 Climaxeth to most freshing loveliness 
 970 Thus claspt by boundless-breathing heaven. 
 
 At last ! 
 
 It's rare to climb a mountain thro' a cave, 
 
 And burst from shelving twilight on a world 
 
 Aglitter ! 
 975 And aglitter with such gauds ! 
 
 My Donatello, like the sun himself 
 
 For bravery! This golden doublet well 
 Becomes thy youth. The basket must be full, 
 
 Or must have been ere gleaming coin like this 
 
 43
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 980 Leakt out of it. My cup had not been full 
 
 Hadst thou not come this day to celebrate 
 
 My last up-coming with me. 
 
 Greetings all ! 
 
 Hands all, you make a marvel. Music ne'er 
 985 Rang true as ring your trowels. Steel on stone 
 
 They be my troubadours! 
 
 Among the clouds 
 
 This fabric's marble all immaculate 
 
 Finds fit and friendly home; their milky breasts 
 990 Are not more spotless than our shrine that lifts 
 
 Its perforate ecstasy of chiseled snow 
 
 Into the airy zenith, point and spire 
 
 Of symboled sweetness to the sons of men 
 
 A lily whose frail petals turn aback 
 995 In dimpling whorls around the clasped bud 
 
 In rippling splendor of last loveliness, 
 
 One with the heavens. That is my dream of dreams. 
 
 Might I but live to see it blossom forth! 
 
 But you, dear friends, let them not change my plan ! 
 1000 You know the wonders that have been proposed 
 The witless schemes that, since we closed the Dome, 
 The know-alls have put forward I, of course, 
 The Dome's imaginer, incapable 
 
 44
 
 NOON 
 
 Of capping it, tho' all the world beside 
 1005 Know how it should be finisht! You recall 
 The lady Gaddi's topknot? Milliners, 
 March hares, and mountebanks are fecund all 
 At capping climaxes of shrine-work. Bah ! 
 At heights where genius trembles lest it fall 
 ioio You'll find all such folk quite at home. That's why, 
 In fear of future patchwork when no more 
 By sonneteering I can silence them, 
 I have forestalled suggestions with cut stone 
 Enough, they say, to build another church 
 1015 Atop o' this! So be't a shrine apart 
 
 To yearn and soar unfaltering up the blue! 
 All 's done but setting, and that goes apace, 
 Thanks to these faithful hands if faithful kept! 
 
 How lang'rous up the hills the town is lapt 
 1020 In crumbled velvet the long river-plain 
 
 Clothing, and lipping o'er each undulance 
 
 Like rugs rich-piled from morning's ancient looms; 
 
 All generously dyed with smoky hues 
 
 Of ochres and of umbers and of earths 
 1025 Riped rusty-ruddy 'neath hoar brooding suns, 
 
 And dull film-bloomed as dusty leopard-skins! 
 
 Never I knew Val d'Arno sweet as now 
 
 45
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 When bitter mingles with its sweetness that 
 I nevermore may view it thus, above, 
 
 1030 Master, and one with this my mastery. 
 Never were hills so lusciously embloomed 
 With florent verdancy as these mine eyes 
 Waxt living things endowed with super-sense, 
 The all-life sentience that's the architect's 
 
 1035 Now breathe and drink into their inmost self 
 And clasp with love's embraces to their heart 
 In ecstasy of voiceless longing ! Ah ! 
 This bitter-sweetness of last times ! Ah me ! 
 
 Look where I will there leap to life renewed 
 1040 Remembrances that lift the tapestry 
 
 Of three score cycles 'fore me. O'er again, 
 Within a moment's musing, all my life 
 I pass in swift review, as men who drown, 
 Adrown in azure. But look where I will 
 1045 1 see no task accomplisht all's to do 
 
 As were I yet a youth untried. Naught save 
 My tiny cell in Santa Croce's garth 
 Of all the tasks is nested quite, and that 
 Least winged of them all. Had I but come 
 1 050 Of age ere one-and-forty there 'd been time 
 To round the region of a full career 
 
 4 6
 
 NOON 
 
 And to define its cincture. Now, I know 
 
 That when my lamps are out there may be some 
 
 Who faithfully will strive not to belie 
 
 1055 The large, serene intent wherewith I wrought; 
 That comforts me. But still there'll many be 
 Who wilfully or wantonly will work, 
 Or ignorantly, to bring all to naught 
 My doing and obscure my meaning. They 
 
 1060 Are in my bosom who'll betray my art 
 Well-meaning Frank and others of his ilk. 
 And out beyond my circle close of those 
 Whose hands are as -my living flesh, whose faith 
 Will guard my concept as their very own, 
 
 1065 Are countless whom my rimed darts have barbed 
 To rankle 'gainst me. They have dogged my steps 
 With fangs and yelping, and have clogged my course 
 With sand and quagmires of primed argument 
 Thro' all my life, till now the hour 's at hand 
 
 1070 When I must leave chaotic all my works 
 My realm unwalled, exposed to free attack, 
 My song unsung, my visions unfulfilled 
 All, all my tasks loose-ended. Was e'er life 
 So full of labors and so void of deed ? 
 
 1075 I reap not who have sown my tragedy, 
 
 Perchance all life's. Yet I'd not change my strife 
 
 47
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Of seed-time for their harvest who ne'er knew 
 The sweat of sowing, the sharp appetite 
 And savor of the furrow. Furrowed deep 
 1080 My Florence is by this right hand of mine, 
 And seeded by this brain's broad sowing, lopt 
 To the quick sap, and pleacht to fruitfulness. 
 
 Down there below the serried gable-saw 
 Of Santa Croce nests my dewy lark, 
 
 1085 My one lone birdling with a trill in flower. 
 It harps my heart-strings. Santo Spirito 
 Across the river gropes into his own, 
 Serene and spacious tho' fragmental still. 
 And San Lorenzo, yet a king uncrowned ! 
 
 1090 All, all unfinisht; e'en my palaces, 
 
 That came too late, late autumn's bounty scant, 
 To set their fruit ere niggard-nipping frost 
 Children of chilled loins that must be riped 
 Orphans on wind-blown leafless branches. All, 
 
 1095 All, all are poniards in me. 
 
 Ah, but most 
 
 More than mine own, deep biters as they be 
 Rankles that smooth-faced house of Cosimo, 
 Dark-veiled this steep noon, usurping where 
 
 1 1 oo By right my sun-bright portent should have shone
 
 NOON 
 
 But for one highwayman. With shrewdest steel 
 Of smug and smiling treachery my friend, 
 Smug smiling Michelozzo, reacht me once 
 Full in the back when I mistook him for 
 
 1105 My armed support, my friend as yours, and one 
 Of our close circle. Him upon my knee 
 I 'd dandled, fed good pap of artistry, 
 Bred form and feature to, and to the world 
 Issued, stampt sound and skilful. You recall 
 
 1 1 10 How he was with us ever on the works 
 Hanging upon our words; not venturesome 
 To have his say, as having naught to speak, 
 But drinking ever from your cup and mine 
 And cameling for use in desert thirsts. 
 
 1115 Not without talent oh, I grant you that 
 A gift for gathering and storing up 
 Of all that might contribute to his end 
 Of making good, will-nilly, with the world ! 
 A skilled manipulator, subtly framed 
 
 1 1 20 To pouch the game, the more that him no pains 
 Preoccupy with the beyond of deed, 
 Its furthermost significance and range. 
 He's no creative mind, that leaps forthright 
 Beyond the oiled smoothness of the known, 
 
 1125 The safe, the rutted road, to regions far, 
 
 49
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Incalculable, challenging, where firsts, 
 Firsts only among minds, dare venture. No! 
 Essential seconds are his kind, who sift 
 What betters ravish from the void, and do 
 1130 In shelter of past judgments what the firsts 
 Conceive, attempt, but fail to bring to end 
 Because they stumble up untrodden paths. 
 
 Look there ! and there ! My Pitti's tortoise-walls 
 That creep to being and his Medici! 
 
 1135 His sudden palace rubbing-of-the-lamp 
 Hath safe the plaudits of our yesterdays ; 
 My plodder shall go far tomorrow's praise 
 May make his pillow easy. And tho' now 
 For years his house hath harbored Medici 
 
 1140 And Pitti frets to see his pile not rooft, 
 Yet Medici is Pitti's get. 'Twas I 
 That set the pace of pride for Cosimo 
 He dared not venture ; far too bold, it seems, 
 For craven times and hearts; but from the loins 
 
 1145 Of my great fancy sprang my rival's thought, 
 Tempered; and temperate, and fitting home 
 To commonplace of life, unriskful. Mine 
 The motive Medici had spurned, rewrought 
 In power for Pitti ( stript, alack, of all 
 
 50
 
 NOON 
 
 1150 Its carven joy of gorgeous heraldry) 
 There, late, too late, it rises; but a torse, 
 Yet of a god! It hath such bravery 
 Of bigness and proportion as the Torse, 
 Compact of vigorous antiquity, 
 
 1155 Digged from Colonna's garden t'other day, 
 That makes Rome very Greece for majesty. 
 I hapt in Rome then at the Pope's behest, 
 And with these very eyes beheld rebirth, 
 From its forgotten grave, of marble Awe. 
 
 1 1 60 Thence I got word of greatness for the task 
 Of princely housing holding then my hand. 
 You'll see the Torse's bigness in that work. 
 
 But 'twas before the hour of fate was ripe. 
 He wanted no cathedral for his house 
 
 1165 Not Cosimo! 'Twas so he put me down 
 When I before his dazzled eyes deployed, 
 In rhythmic pomp of prideful blazonry, 
 The plastical presentment of the wish 
 That trumpt to empire in his heart of hearts, 
 
 1170 Yet craftily o'erwrought and smothered deep 
 'Neath padded coverture of humbleness, 
 That thence no cry from vibrant throats outbreathe 
 To waken up the people's first alarm.
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 As when ere some great rite deep silence broods 
 
 1175 O'er the awed rapture of a twilight throng, 
 And every heart halts breathless for a sound 
 To thrill the expectant emptiness; beyond, 
 Beyond the pulsate smother of sealed door 
 Beyond sealed door, dumb room beyond dumb room, 
 
 1 1 80 The silken- trained processional prepares, 
 And lifts the lisping of the quire divine, 
 Itself its song's sole audience: so I knew, 
 Beyond the unbroke seals of Cosimo 
 His mind, and still within his outward front 
 
 1185 So modest nay, so mean the paean proud 
 That murmurous prepared a future shout, 
 Ominous kin to clank. Intuitive 
 I, artist, saw (with eyes which on worn knees 
 Searcht inward, pricking ear for that the drum 
 
 1 1 90 Trembled not yet with ) what must be, one day, 
 The shame of our evolving history 
 Not yet in being, and the coiled spring 
 Of his heart and of Florence's. That spring 
 I made the motive of the majesty 
 
 1195 I clothed his habitation stiff withal, 
 
 Like cloth-of-gold ashimmer, rich impearled 
 Symbol of sovranty, the mask and show 
 Of inward quicks he dared not yet to face
 
 NOON 
 
 Or venture forth upon; which he knew not, 
 1 200 Perchance, stretcht treacherous as morning glass, 
 
 Tempting steeled feet o'er thinness. My device, 
 
 My rich imagined house interpretive, 
 
 Flasht mirror-wise his hidden longing's face 
 
 On his shockt consciousness. 
 1205 "No! No!" he cried, 
 
 "Not such thoughts in my inmost being live 
 
 All innocent of rule am I at heart ! 
 
 Or if there spring, deep down, a seed of lust 
 
 For princehood, still that shoot must screen its push 
 1 2 10 To life, lest Florence ravish my safe place 
 
 Of treasure, and my stirps do deathward. No ! 
 
 Enough, that what of power I have, I have 
 
 All unannounced the substance, not the face. 
 
 The face hath force to quench young power's fount 
 1 2 1 5 As Gorgon froze hope's life-blood. Palaces 
 
 Speak loud; I merely want a whispered tale 
 
 Of merchant modesty." 
 
 A whispered tale! 
 
 Ye gods! And 'twas for me to breathe in stone, 
 1 2 20 "This man is but a townsman like us all 
 
 There is no harm in him see but this mask 
 
 Only a modest trader." 
 
 Artistry, 
 
 53
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 The soul behind my house interpretive, 
 
 1225 Betrayed itself so ! 
 
 Character, not lies, 
 
 Is my art ! Inner springs of consciousness 
 And seedlings of futurity that grope 
 Beneath thick-heaped strata of old Adam 
 
 1 230 In crannied rocks of selfhood, unsuspedl, 
 'Tis the prime task o' th' architect to voice 
 As of the portraitist. Who cares to show 
 But the dry husking of his subject's soul, 
 And surface scorings, is far kin of him 
 
 1235 Who makes but to interpret. 
 
 Centuries 
 
 Of senseless aping of the north in forms 
 Our sunshine ne'er claspt hands with, and whose tongue 
 Our tongues took hardly had seared up, the while 
 
 1 240 Thro' the long dark the southland slept, men's sense 
 Of the organic framework of all art, 
 And most of mine, the builder's. Cosimo 
 Spake Florence truly when he askt for lies, 
 Asking for art for cover. But you know 
 
 1245 None better, Donatello very truth, 
 
 Naught else, truth integral and poignant 'tis 
 That lifts art out of earthiness on wings 
 That fan the empyrean. And 'twas truth, 
 
 54
 
 NOON 
 
 Divined by intuitions all divine, 
 
 1 250 That Cosimo'd have none of. 
 
 Bottom- wrought 
 As only he who dares behold a soul 
 Face outward and to grapple home with it 
 Can be wrought to despisal of the craven 
 
 1255 Who safe behind accrete soul-fences still, 
 Perforce of custom, will ensconce himself 
 And smile content with surfacing I sneered, 
 "Not art then 'tis you want, but subtlety 
 Which is a kinder word for lying ! " 
 
 1260 He, 
 
 Whose wont you know was flabby white, like worms 
 You startle fatly lurking under stones, 
 Flamed fire-bright at such touching; but cold steel 
 From his eyes' scabbard flasht, and flesht me sharp, 
 
 1265 Home to the hilt. "Your subtleties," he hissed, 
 " Be for your subtleness, that peeps behind 
 The decencies indecently. Have done! 
 True art gives cover; 'tis false art betrays, 
 False to the purposes behind the veil. 
 
 1270 All life is built by veiling." 
 
 There it was 
 
 The secret of his potence, the crass warp 
 Wherethro' slid swift the shuttle of his mind, 
 
 55
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Weaving the patterned fabric of deceit 
 
 1275 To cloak his crescence! 
 
 Mad with rage, deep stung 
 By th' spiteful venom of his touchiness, 
 I crasht my clenched fist thro' the frail thing 
 So many months of hotfoot toil had reared, 
 
 1280 And crusht its fragile framework into naught 
 The apple of my eye, for from the deeps 
 And hidden places of my second sight 
 It had sprung forth, the childing of the void 
 Impregnate of my will in potency 
 
 1285 Prophetic! 
 
 See yon smugness there below 
 Milder and harmlesser than aught the town 
 Can show else, for the front of family 
 Or pride or power ! Oh, very meek and smooth 
 
 1 290 It sits and sits sweet smiling by the way, 
 
 And hawks its heart to the road's beckoning, 
 
 Unnotably pretentious; notablest 
 
 In all the town for pretense, notablest 
 
 As coadjutor of the game he plays, 
 
 1295 Its shy, suave owner, to make good the hold 
 That even now grows subtler and more sure 
 On the concupiscence of Florence ! 
 
 God! 
 
 56
 
 NOON 
 
 At that self instant when my talons tore 
 1 300 The vitals from my Titan, underneath 
 A scarlet hood alongside hid, approved, 
 The model that had won his heart, the whore 
 He chose to house him Michelozzo's lie, 
 Bastardly spawn of kingly seed of mine 
 1305 He'd watcht put forth when oft and oft again 
 He came to greet me friendly. Oh, you know 
 How I despised to hoard my secret; how 
 I stood to publish my full power abroad 
 For the world's weal, in over-proud contempt, 
 1310 Mayhap, of selfish pride proud pridelessness 
 That hath undone me, fool of proudest pride ! 
 
 But silence, proud Filippo ! Hold thy tongue, 
 Lest rage bewray thy inward ravenings! 
 Those be old ulcers cleansed by kinder years. 
 
 1315 In this keen upward of thin April air 
 
 From whence the boundless ranging of the eye 
 Sights large the checkered telltale of the town, 
 And, seeing whole, yet sees in sharp detail 
 The open riddles of its skyward face 
 
 1320 (For towns, like men, ope heart but to the blue), 
 Now, in aloofness of long-cooled thought 
 Freshened with friendship for that subtle hand 
 
 57
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Which, while it worms to maw what I would not 
 It ere get hold on, knows to bright bright gold, 
 
 1325 And gladden ancient Florence with young zest 
 I see us, Cosimo and me, two types 
 Of onwardness, which, meeting in the lists 
 Of life, encounter doughty champions, both, 
 Of selfsame hosts of conquest; 'gainst the world 
 
 1330 When pitted, single for advance; yet, coped 
 In the blind melee of the jousting-field, 
 At odds most rashly. I can see his art 
 The art that comfort gives a subtle thing 
 Of silk-soft tread, whose suave amenity 
 
 *335 Sweetens and riches being, brothers man 
 
 And clothes his consciousness with textiles fine 
 That fleece his nest with velvet. His the task 
 To skirmish far afield and commandeer 
 All Capuan luxuries for the long campaign 
 
 1 340 With risk of Capuan looseness. Cosimo 
 
 Hath made our Florence sweeter on the tooth 
 And softer under bone; I thank him for't, 
 And for his friendly hand, forgetting soon 
 My sooner trespass. But I know that art 
 
 1 345 Our art, which is a thing of mastery 
 
 Strikes deeper than the surface, rounds a range 
 Vaster than scout-purveyors of earth-sweets 
 
 58
 
 NOON 
 
 Ere dreamed of searching, and proves good its claim 
 To larger regions of the soul than they 
 
 1350 Can compass in their vastest views. I know 
 Great art full-panoplied for war, and armed 
 With the bright glaive of light. Not love she bears 
 But that sharp sword which leaps to the deep heart 
 Of things, and outs love's secrets ; forges on 
 
 1355 Into the vast unknown and cleaves a way 
 Thro' grewsome forest and o'er desert wild 
 Unto the hold creational, whence spring 
 The founts of being, one with Him who wields 
 The wand supernal. As the Master saith, 
 
 1 360 "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: 
 I came not to send peace, but a sword," 
 So enters the Eternal into man, 
 Whether He come as Christ into the world 
 To ransom heart-stuff from assault of sin, 
 
 1365 Or come as force creative, to redeem 
 
 The promise of man's conscience, to lay low 
 The beast of grossness, and to raise up heads 
 That slumber till His coming to raise up 
 Heights that shall look upon His face and shine 
 
 1370 Bright beacons to the hindmost. 
 
 These be all 
 Divine, inexplicable mysteries. 
 
 59
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 You know, my friends, we be but instruments, 
 No more, we artists ; blades whose tempered steel 
 
 1375 Life sharpens to swift practice, grinding down 
 Their native roughness to such razor-edge 
 As slips 'twixt life and death, 'twixt false and true. 
 God ! and when hearts are rubbed thus, who shall say 
 The anguish of that sharping ? None may guess 
 
 1 3 80 Their midnights, their beseechings, their revolts, 
 Their up-in-arms against the law of life 
 That grips them fast to loathe and to delight 
 In one same ad:, of making and destroying, 
 Of striking to the bottom to lay ope 
 
 1385 The sores and grafts of life (oh, horrid tasks 
 Of swift red lopping!), to the very bone 
 Slashing the growth convention, to the rock 
 Clearing debris of ages, so to rear 
 A fairer fane of beauty which shall tower, 
 
 1390 A city on a hill, that men shall know 
 O'er stretcht-out plains of generations, fair 
 As moon-kissed alabaster 'gainst the night 
 A pinnacled, spiring splendor's mystic web 
 Of lucent chiseling ! 
 
 1395 O Christ, how fine 
 
 Are these, Thy instruments of making, ground 
 Betwixt the upper and the lower blades 
 
 60
 
 NOON 
 
 Thou sharpenest, or grains (I know not which) 
 Of corn Thou bruisest into snowy dust 
 
 1400 To feed the generations fertilized 
 
 Thro' bruising's death to mystic fruit of life ! 
 
 My figures melt like rivers in a sea 
 
 Of light ashimmer in a rich mirage 
 
 That lures us on across life's boundless sands 
 
 1405 To Edens endlessly removed. 
 
 No more ! 
 
 Now to those hands that wait to know my hest, 
 This hour of mine atop flies on apace. 
 
 61
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 PART III EVENING 
 
 TIME : Sunset and dusk of the same day. 
 
 SCENE : The slopes below San Miniato, overlooking Florence. 
 
 PERSONS : Brunelleschi and Donatella. 
 
 Brunelleschi speaks. 
 
 T, 
 
 HINE arm, Donate, up these cypress glooms. 
 Tide thou me o'er this deep sward, blanchly sprayed 
 And fresh with breathing fragrance; up the swell 
 To the sheened harborage of sunset-spilth 
 Oozing from cloud-cliff ledges of the west 
 To yon bronze pond of even, cypress-walled. 
 
 1415 Fragile as fingers phantom-thin, those spires 
 Of dun grove-sancluaries lean aloft 
 And answer the lush zephyrs' buoyancy, 
 More sensitive than seaweeds to the deep's 
 Inconstant instance. Beckon they to eve's 
 
 1420 Pale primrose leagues of lucence, " Hitherward, 
 In waters of submerging ecstasy 
 Transfused, pour down, baptize, anoint us, one 
 With everlasting, glorious farewells ! " 
 
 63
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Or reads my heart its conscience into theirs, 
 
 1425 That thus I voice them? Sunset and Farewell 
 They walk companionly the shadowy aisles 
 Of my heart's cloister, silent of today, 
 Reverberant alone of bygone things, 
 In memory. . . . 
 
 1430 In memory, O Gift 
 
 O bounteous gift, not niggard as men say, 
 Calling thee Donatello memory 
 Of thee and of thinfe ancient giving ! This, 
 Thine arm that crutcheth me, upbears in sooth 
 
 1435 My heavy spirit more than earthly weight. 
 
 Thou so hast ever done; I thank thee. Words 
 What be they when the heart is full? Wan shapes 
 That swoon unrecognizable beneath 
 The flood of feeling, not to be reclaimed ! 
 
 1440 And words, to me, thou know'st, have ever been 
 But exercise of torture, tearing way 
 From sealed treasure-chambers of my soul 
 In torment; for my natal tongue and thine 
 Is one of forms, of symbols of no sound, 
 
 1445 That discourse hold not with the gossip ear 
 But with the eye, and thro' the plastic sense, 
 Touch in imagination. Pardon thou 
 My want of wordy- wise conveyancing ; 
 
 6 4
 
 EVENING 
 
 My heart's estates are thine inheritance 
 
 1450 By right unwrit. Thou'st known to read my thought, 
 My deep's emotion, in the printless page 
 Of wall and bastion, colonnade and tower, 
 And ( fullest witness of my soul's desire ) 
 My Dome's immortal palimpsest of love. 
 
 1455 Corporate art thou in that perfe&ness. 
 Its resolute assurance, pausing yet 
 This side of self-sufficiency ; its swift 
 Abandon, which a delicate restraint 
 Reins in from recklessness; its vital verve, 
 
 1460 Whose breezy freshness gentle manners make 
 Kindly demure these are thy gifts to it, 
 In that thou gavest me thy love to keep, 
 And, keeping, I imbibed it till my soul 
 Knew not the metes betwixt its own and thine, 
 
 1465 Drowned in affection's flood-tide. I know not 
 How makers can mature in isolate 
 And self-sufficing ownness. Nay, methinks 
 Such beings be not as can mount alone, 
 Amid the threat and scuffle of the world, 
 
 1470 Up gateways of the day. Companionship 
 In ends akin, in pace along the road, 
 In tongue, in taste is needful to the task. 
 I, whom our Florentines count loneliest, 
 
 65
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 How have I been befriended! Never else 
 1475 Had I been borne to take the onward wave 
 And win toward harbor harbor never yet 
 Man might attain to, ere the falling night. 
 
 Night falls apace. More stoutly up these glooms 
 Speed ye, my cloddy footsteps, to the space 
 
 1480 Whence are these shadows washt, whence o'er the vale 
 Mine eyes may plane as on a level wing. 
 Once more as God looks down upon His world, 
 The handiwork He loves so well His eye 
 Parts never from it I must gaze upon 
 
 1485 My masterwork adown these heights removed. 
 
 Now glimmers west-washt silver forth the bronze 
 Of dwindling cypresses the dais'd shrine 
 Of far San Miniato, regent hoar, 
 Unquestioned, on the headland of the hills 
 1490 Up-throned high, whom prostrate valleys yield 
 Sweeping obeisance unto. Pearly dews 
 Now drench and sanctify that saintly front 
 With kisses of wan even. Lo, the flush 
 Which blooms his ancience at the pure salute! 
 
 1495 How oft in days agone have I toiled up 
 
 66
 
 EVENING 
 
 These highlands in saint pilgrimage to learn 
 The lessons of yon ancient ! Thence the lead 
 I followed far, far off when Cosimo 
 Gave me to build anew the rotting fane 
 
 1 500 Of San Lorenzo. Santo Spirito 
 
 As well is of his blood, and proudest prince 
 Of that great strain. Recall, Donato, hours 
 We friended o'er these hills and dreamed the day 
 When Florence should awake and know us hers! 
 
 1505 E'en then, before I knew me architect, 
 I glimpsed the perfecting of motives yet 
 Inchoate or abortive in the frame 
 Of sire San Miniato. After-years 
 When I at length had crossed my Rubicon, 
 
 1510 Campaigning Romeward fixt those motives' fate, 
 When you and I ranged over the seven hills 
 Mid churches of the early faith ; for then 
 I knew San Miniato for the van 
 Of the far-purposed army of true type, 
 
 1515 Outpost of sane tradition. Mindest thou 
 The vineyard-height of the hill Aventine, 
 How o'er the brink it beetles of the swirl 
 Of ochre Tiber ? On its brow, afar 
 And lonely from now haunts of men sole rest, 
 
 1520 Or well nigh, of the teeming hordes that erst 
 
 6 7
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Peopled its slopes with proletariate 
 
 Upon the brow of Aventine is set 
 
 Rome's clearest witness of the morn devout 
 
 Whence rays our day of Christdom : humblemost 
 
 1525 Santa Sabina. There I felt my heart 
 
 Touched to its deepest sense of simpleness 
 And childly trust. By beauties unobscured 
 Which glorify the shrines of loftier saints, 
 That house of quietness makes room for prayer 
 
 1530 Spontaneous, uncompulsed of all spur 
 Of splendor or of poignance figurate. 
 Its very bareness breeds a broader faith. 
 Its rudeness links one with the Manger-born, 
 Its pureness with His sacring. Sacrifice 
 
 1535 Is writ upon its gates, in freighted cross 
 
 First-fruit exemplar from the sculptor's tool 
 In that rash kind. ("Take thou a bit of wood 
 And fashion me that Agony ! " recall'st, 
 
 Donatello?) Me that grandeur took 
 1 540 Of self sincerity, and on a day 
 
 1 wrought thereafter. 
 
 Too much, thinkest thou, 
 I prate of bygones ? too much base my mind 
 On olden wont? Thy hand hath found a means 
 1 545 To work its way unhampered, tho' thine art 
 
 68
 
 EVENING 
 
 Drew milk from ancient udders, as mine own. 
 Yet but bethink thee! Sculpture deals with man, 
 Life's great convention, ever help at hand 
 And scapeless even wouldst thou scape its prop; 
 
 1550 Limning, not less so. But we architects 
 Handle imagined forms, by architects 
 Created, our forerunners timeless kin, 
 Voiceless yet partners of the compact. Ours 
 Convention with gone fellows, whose built words 
 
 1555 Gain usufruct of meaning in the mouths 
 Of thriftful generations. Therefore art 
 In my kind is antiquity re-youthed, 
 New-furbisht fresher for its anciency. 
 I reverence the past as thou, Donate, 
 
 1560 Worship's! fine human figure, as the type 
 Whence thou derivest freedom to essay 
 Outward in realms thine only; scrupulous 
 To guard essential likeness to the kind 
 On pain of losing truth in license. 
 
 1565 Ha! 
 
 Behold! Once from the shades enfranchised, bursts 
 A universal glamour of doomed day ! 
 Tho' thou art fled, O Lucence, tarrieth 
 The spirit of thy splendor, nebulous 
 
 1 570 Out airy vasts of scintillance. Unbound, 
 
 6 9
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 The rich ambrosian tresses of the orb 
 Departed, riot-streaming, swathe the void 
 Abyss illimitable of the heavens 
 Auroral aura of Divinity ! 
 
 1575 On fiery front of Godhead Sinai gazed 
 
 Sole scatheless; us 'tis now vouchsafed to glimpse 
 In rapture Godhead's radiant aureole, 
 That whelms eve's desert welkin with flood-flame 
 Out-glorying Apollo! Ne'er was sight 
 
 158080 dazzling with long-dalliant gorgeousness' 
 Loose-lapsing tendrils and out-shredded films 
 Of dissipate liquescent fire, as now 
 Zeniths Val d' Arno, sheer-o'erleaping ! 
 
 Oh, . 
 
 1585 How is Thy greatness magnified, O Lord, 
 By this adumbrance of Thy majesty ! 
 The day hath left but trails impalpable 
 Of the supernal progress ; yet the cheek 
 Blanches and pricks with chill of awed surmise, 
 
 1 5 90 The heart leaps up and halts in ecstasy 
 
 At but this pale remembrance of day's loss, 
 As 'twere faint fragrance of an hour forgot 
 Wafted adown the airy aisles of dreamland. 
 
 Lo, and the vale ! Outspread beneath the cope 
 
 7
 
 EVENING 
 
 1595 Of skiey conflagration, how is it 
 
 Beholden to that glory, counter-tincT: 
 
 Responsive to candescent radiance 
 
 And steept in variant empery of hues 
 
 That clothe the footstool of the purple throne 
 1 600 With throneful splendor ! On the velvet breast 
 
 Of earth's unearthly beauty flames one gem, 
 
 Up-founting in distinction moltenly 
 
 And catching sky-fire on its sole-bright brow. 
 
 Dome that art my skiey part and whole 
 1605 Of my sky-yearning, now hath fallen on thee 
 
 The sanctifying ray of Heaven and bred 
 Transcendence in thee this my heart a clod 
 That hath brought forth a cloud of glory ! 
 
 Friend, 
 
 1610 Dear friend, this fusion of the world with heaven 
 Melteth old hatred to a shamed thing. 
 My Child hath found the glamour of the sky 
 And shines redeemed; the eleventh hour 
 Hath overtaken my harsh-heartedness. 
 
 1615 It shall not be so. Take my testament: 
 
 My Child, that I have borne and given suck, 
 
 And brought most- way to manhood yea, my Dome 
 
 1 do bequeath it to mine enemy, 
 Whom I have hated. He will cherish it. 
 
 7 1
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 1620 I know him, and have hated him the more 
 For that I knew him all unhateable: 
 Weak once and human, merely Michelozzo. 
 I cannot climb to Him who on the rock 
 Of weakness full-forgiven set His throne, 
 
 1625 Unless unfardeled of that hating. . . . 
 
 Gone! 
 
 E'en as we wonder gone! As memory 
 Evades reluctant, like a breathed-on flame, 
 And into darkness wavers and withdraws 
 
 1630 As young men's visions fade to old men's dreams - 
 The day's last lingering splendor now dissolves 
 Into dim eve's phantasmal loveliness. 
 
 So hath my wick gone out. My day of toil, 
 Donato, it is done. Remaineth naught 
 
 1635 Of the long road of frustrate dreams. 
 
 Shall dawn 
 
 Yet e'er revolve and up the painted east 
 Shoot splendor? We have felt these eager years 
 The dawning of a loveliness. But night 
 
 1640 Draws close about us, and its touch is cold 
 
 Upon my brow. Mine eyes are dark. My hand 
 
 Bridles no longer to his wonted toil. 
 
 And yet this heart will not be daunted! Thou, 
 
 72
 
 EVENING 
 
 Who hast the secret of the secret things 
 
 1645 Divined in the organic principle 
 Of character in beauty thou, and I 
 Who have groped with thee up toward Beauty's shrine 
 And laid upon her altar all I am 
 We may not doubt the passing of this dark. 
 
 1 650 Too deep in the essential core of life 
 Is beauty planted to be rooted out 
 And cast upon the sateless fires of time. 
 If branch be lopt, yet shall new shoots put forth, 
 More manifold, more strengthened for the knife. 
 
 1655 So we have grown with lopping, well thou know'st 
 Purged by adversity, and circumcised 
 In spirit by affliction. The heart needs 
 Some slashing for the perfect fruit. 
 
 These years 
 
 1660 That have lookt forward to a dawning sweet, 
 Upon my tongue they have been bitter. Oh, 
 I drained the cup of scorn in those old days 
 When laughter and detraction followed me 
 From fangful packs of snarlers, e'er and aye 
 
 1665 Thro' damned years of effort to my end 
 My end that more was Florence's. That cup, 
 So long since drunken to the nauseous dregs, 
 Hath venomed something at my inmost source 
 
 73
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 And sent me tainted down the hill, attaint 
 
 1670 With pungence and acerbity where else 
 Had run but sweetness and a madcap rill 
 Of hurtless laughter. Tainted streams (what else?) 
 Should flow from that outrageous prisonment 
 Which gnarled my joints with agues, rheums, and blains, 
 
 1675 And shrouded visioned eyes with fetid damps, 
 Because, forsooth, assurance I had gained 
 At last to make my point against the throng; 
 Because, forsooth, no Builders' Guilder I, 
 Tho' I was building what their Builders' Guild 
 
 1 680 Knew naught of nor could compass ! Kindly milk 
 Flows not from acrid foster-dugs, as figs 
 Grow not on thistles. From my jailing gusht 
 The spring of poisoned arrows into rime 
 That seared thick skins as acid bites crude dross. 
 
 1685 Ah, God forgive my rancor! I am he 
 
 That is so crusht by wrong that lust bursts out 
 For vengeance on the wronger and the years, 
 Upon my tongue they have been bitter. 
 
 Nay, 
 
 1 690 Sweet wormwood, surely, since I've had thy faith 
 To balm the sore that healeth last of all. 
 And then, as core and substance of my life, 
 I've had a task immortal. None may say 
 
 74
 
 EVENING 
 
 The life is bitter which hath held two bests 
 
 1695 God to Himself hath appanaged to love 
 And to create; two bests that be but one, 
 For at the last to love is to create. 
 And to create? What is it but to love? 
 In irised indistinctness all their lines 
 
 1 700 Swim mystical about the void of night, 
 Merging in one thro' manifest diverse. 
 Yea, I have loved the love of loneliness, 
 Out-yearning worldwards in default of love 
 To pour my manhood unto, all my man 
 
 1705 Making for making. From my loins have leapt 
 A progeny of vital creatures thoughts 
 That I have builded into loveliness, 
 Which, once brought forth, have life intrinsical. 
 Those children of the generative mind, 
 
 1710 We know not whither they may take their way, 
 
 Why live, where house, whom spouse, how procreate, 
 When shuffle off; scarce launcht, self-masters. Would 
 I might foreknow what time doth keep for them, 
 Those offspring mine! Will they be fruitful seed? . . 
 
 1715 Apace the dusk advances into gloom. 
 
 While we have watcht, adown the darkening slopes 
 The day hath drained in a steady stream, 
 
 75
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Withdrawing stealthily thro* cypress isles 
 Uplift from forth its current. Now the flood 
 
 1720 Of tardy-truant laggard light hath dropt 
 And leveled, gathered in the serpenting 
 Pearl-silver pool of Arno. Only there 
 All radiant wanderers have rendezvous' d 
 In glassy splendor. Out into the west 
 
 1725 Light lies and languishes in liquid sleep. 
 
 O peachblow bloom of Florence ! ' How thy heart 
 Is mirrored in that lambence, which flows on 
 Into unwot-of realms of the west's day, 
 Revolving evermore! Thy soul hath burst 
 
 1 7 30 And burgeoned riotously on the brave 
 
 Meander-margents of this westward stream, 
 As 'twere the stem of time and thou the bloom 
 That glads its nakedness. Well they thee called 
 Who from the lavish garden of all tongues 
 
 1735 Sought out the richest treasuries, bee-wise, 
 And culled the deathless honey of thy name. 
 Thy soul is one with loveliness, thy name 
 But one with that it nameth gentle breath 
 That wafts the sweetness of all blossoming 
 
 1 740 Aboon the dusty wayside. 
 
 Florentine ! 
 
 7 6
 
 EVENING 
 
 How sing the heart-strings to the kindling warmth 
 Of that flute-call's full music ! Florentine ! 
 'Tis thou and I, Donate, summoneth 
 
 1 745 That blossom-soft, high clarion ; and he 
 
 Whose name akin to thine, the giving-one 
 Is as a pearl of price, whose form is lost 
 In dissolution in the noble grape 
 Of " Florentine," so one leap o'er our lips 
 
 1 7 50 That living name and Dante's! Thence 'tis ours 
 To be the fellows of immortal song, 
 And to breathe in song's vital spirit. He, 
 Who wove the garden-sweetness of all love 
 Into one awsome triune universe 
 
 1755 Of everlasting being, hath laid hand 
 
 Upon our brows who spring from selfsame soil, 
 And breathed into our mere mortality 
 A breath immortal. Ours to live and die 
 More greatly for his greatness, and more sweet 
 
 1760 For that his fragrance hath embosomed sense 
 In spirit largeness. 
 
 O thou Florentine! 
 Essential, adjunct, and epitome 
 Stem, branch, and blossom of our consciousness! 
 
 1765 Behold I now thy form upon the marge 
 
 Of glamourous Arno, dreaming in the gloam ? 
 
 77
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 Or is it she whom I have loved and served 
 She whom I have espoused whom in my breast 
 I wear, the cresting blossom of the world, 
 
 1 770 Time's fragrant childling, Florence? Be it thou 
 Or she thou, sweetest voice of deathlessness, 
 Or she, whom thy sweet voice hath deathless made 
 One only soul I witness, evermore 
 Inseparate. Snatch thou me up to thee, 
 
 1775 Lift thou my spirit till't be one with thine 
 And thou become the essence of my soul 
 As of our city ! Nay, I am but one 
 With thee; I lipt thy measures with her milk 
 Who bare me, and my self is saturate 
 
 1780 With thy flood-spirit. In my work of works 
 Yonder up-standing quickened thing of clay 
 There throbs the life-blood of thy mightiness 
 Somehow thro' me anew made manifest, 
 From thee derivative, from thee who sprang 
 
 1785 From the essential pregnance Florence is 
 
 Of power and sweetness. Thine and hers it is, 
 That greatness I have fathered, now in night 
 Still gleaming luminous, of all the vale, 
 Alone. From out the shrouded west some ray 
 
 1790 Inscrutably still penetrates the dark 
 
 And touches to long-lingering rose the Dome, 
 
 7 8
 
 EVENING 
 
 Informing, as a lamp its glow, that globe 
 With warmth and lambency. 
 
 Oh, may it be 
 
 1795 A shining for the age to come, the flame 
 Of a vast-regioned cresset, beaconing 
 The minds that are my fellows yet-to-be 
 Up darksome trails of travail to the height 
 Where shrines, approachable, the Loveliness 
 
 1 800 Eternal. May my art contribute to, 
 
 And bring down nearer to men's bungling hands, 
 The art of the divine Artificer 
 Wherein are all things as the light of day, 
 Tho' darkly now we see as in a glass. 
 
 1805 In sudden vision I behold the hour 
 
 When art shall speak untrammeled and its words 
 Shall arrow straight unto their goal, nor mist 
 Of indirection but obscure the sense 
 That lies behind their music. May my light, 
 
 iSioTho' be't but darkness, kindle on and on 
 Into the night and usher in a morn 
 When architecture shall be one with truth, 
 Truth one with power, and power with constancy ! 
 
 Yet I bethink me in my heart of hearts 
 1815 That truth is one with trial. I have set 
 
 79
 
 BRUNELLESCHI 
 
 My hand unto a task whereof not all 
 
 I might fulfil and live, for so not man 
 
 Were I, but He who made man in His image 
 
 Endowed with heavenward power to look above 
 
 1820 But ever impotent to reach the height. 
 
 For the allotted three score years and ten 
 Or such of them as answered I've essayed 
 To climb the summit of the centuries 
 And orb their life in skiey stone! And now 
 
 1825 From off my height unfinisht, unattained, 
 I step into the starry ambience 
 And mystery of evening skies. . . . 
 
 The Dome! 
 Behold ! While we are musing, from the east 
 
 1830 Hath swum the glamour of the lesser light 
 And rimed its lamp with silver. I will take 
 This radiance as an augury. Farewell! 
 Let us go down, Donato, while the moon 
 Plays Dian to Endymion, my Dome, 
 
 1835 Kissing his sleep to dreams of loveliness 
 That shall fulfil all longing ! 
 
 Gift, thine arm. . . 
 
 80
 
 NOTES 
 
 The full name of Brunelleschi ( 1377-1446) was Filippo di 
 Ser Brunellesco Lapi. Brunelleschi, the name by which he is 
 generally known, was the family name of his paternal grand 
 mother. 
 
 LINE 4 
 
 Andrea di Lazzaro de' Cavalcanti ( 1412-1462 ), called, from 
 his birthplace, Buggiano. He was a sculptor, a pupil of Dona- 
 tello, and a close friend and protege of Brunelleschi, who 
 adopted him as a son. 
 
 LINE 24 'T is a beauty such, methinks, 
 
 As none but he who made can utterly , 
 Delight in ! 
 
 This is a reference to the following lines of Dante : 
 
 La bellezza ch' io vidi, si trasmoda 
 
 Non pur di la da noi, ma certo io credo 
 Che solo il Suo Fattor tutta la goda. 
 
 PARADISO: Canto XXX, lines 19-21. 
 
 Vasari tells us that Brunelleschi was a profound admirer of 
 Dante, whose lines were ever on his lips. Several paraphrases 
 are mentioned hereafter in these notes ; but it is unnecessary, 
 and indeed impossible, to identify all of the oblique allusions 
 with which the text is sown. Brunelleschi gives full credit in 
 his own words to the Florentine for the debt he, and all men, 
 owe him. (See line 1762 et seq.) 
 
 83
 
 NOTES 
 
 LINE 26 
 
 Arnolfo di Cambio, or di Lapo, (1232-1301) was the origi 
 nal architect of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, which 
 was founded in 1294. Arnolfo's father's name was Lapo, while 
 Lapi was the family name of Brunelleschi, whose father was 
 Ser Brunellesco di Lippo Lapi. This suggests a possible family 
 relationship, all the more probable as Vasari tells us that the 
 above Ser Brunellesco's grandfather 'was called Cambio. Lapi 
 was, however, one of the most common of all Florentine names. 
 
 LINE 55 There hath art 
 
 Touched the high term of beauty. 
 
 Brunelleschi has in mind the following lines of Dante : 
 
 Ma or convien che il mio seguir desista 
 Piu dietro a sua bellezza, poetando, 
 Come all' ultimo suo ciascuno artista. 
 
 PARADISO: Canto XXX, lines 31-33. 
 LINE 66 
 
 Timid that profile as it budded first 
 
 Arnolfo's original plan, which was modified after his death 
 by his successors, included an octagonal dome of masonry, but 
 much lower in profile than as executed later by Brunelleschi ; 
 and, furthermore, without the high drum or wall which lifts 
 the dome proper some twenty-five feet above the top of the 
 nave walls. The initial idea of the dome, therefore, we owe to 
 Arnolfo; its freedom, majesty, and beauty, as well as the skill 
 of its execution, to Brunelleschi. 
 LINE 70 
 
 Those close maestri, 
 
 The general conduct of the construction of the cathedral was 
 in the hands of the maestri (masters) of the Opera del Duomo 
 (Board of Works of the Cathedral).
 
 NOTES 
 
 LINE 162 
 
 Unfinisht yet and webbed with scantling gold 
 
 The main structure of the dome proper had been completed 
 and the cathedral consecrated in 1436, ten years before Bru- 
 nelleschi speaks ; the lantern, of white marble, was begun seven 
 years later, only three years before the architect's death, in 
 1446, and not finished till 1462, under Michelozzo. 
 
 LINE 189 
 
 'Tis thou I would have make my monument; 
 
 The most interesting and valuable work of Andrea's which 
 has come down to us is the circular wall-tablet in relief, to 
 Brunelleschi's memory admirable in execution, and most 
 convincing as a portrait which is placed high on the south 
 wall of the cathedral just inside the southwest entrance. 
 
 LINE 218 
 
 Thou know'st my model for Lorenzo's doors ; 
 
 Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), the sculptor. The baptistry 
 doors which were the subject of the competition in 1401 are 
 those on the south side, corresponding in general character 
 with the north doors already completed in 1336 by Andrea 
 Pisano. On completion, after more than twenty years of labor, 
 Ghiberti's doors were considered so fine that he was commis 
 sioned to execute the east doors as well ; and it was these, 
 even finer than the south doors, which Michelangelo declared 
 worthy to be the gates of Paradise. These occupied Ghiberti 
 more than a quarter of a century, and were his most important 
 work. 
 
 LINE 243 
 
 Giotto di Bondone (1276-1337), like Arnolfo and Brunel- 
 leschi, died before the completion of his great architectural 
 
 85
 
 NOTES 
 
 work. The tower, which he had begun in 1334, was completed 
 in 1387. Yet "completed" is hardly the word to use, for 
 Giotto's plan contemplated a high spire above the present 
 cornice, which has never been executed, though the prepara 
 tions for it are to be seen in their unfinished state under the 
 supposedly temporary roof of the tower. 
 
 LINE 325 
 
 Our two Lorenzo's and my own stood out 
 
 These two models in bronze, for a panel illustrating the 
 Sacrifice of Isaac, are now hung side by side in the Bargello. 
 There are considerable differences in merit as to composition, 
 which are in Ghiberti's favor; but the most striking superi 
 ority of his bronze is in its spiritual quality. His Abraham is 
 loth to strike, while Brunelleschi's goes vigorously to work, 
 "hot to the deed, e'en odious" (see line 338). 
 
 LINE 365 
 
 Donatello (Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi, 1386-1466), 
 the great sculptor, was Brunelleschi's stanchest friend till death. 
 
 LINE 368 
 
 Masaccio (Tommaso di Ser Giovanni Guidi da Castel San 
 Giovanni, 1401-1428), who died at the early age of twenty- 
 seven, had already worked a revolution in painting. His fres 
 coes in the Brancacci chapel in the church of Santa Maria del 
 Carmine are perhaps the finest of his works that remain to 
 us. These and others were the models from which Michel 
 angelo and Raphael, and in fact most of the later painters of 
 the Renaissance, studied and formed their style. 
 
 LINE 436 
 
 In desert purlieus of the shrunken town 
 
 At the end of the middle ages Rome had shrunk to a small 
 
 86
 
 NOTES 
 
 town. For three-quarters of a century before Brunelleschi's 
 time, the city was not even the papal capital, the popes having 
 established their court at Avignon, whence they returned to 
 Rome the year of Brunelleschi's birth, 1377. The city then 
 went through a period of more than two score years of schism 
 and anarchy hardly less, perhaps more, disastrous than abso 
 lute desertion. The latter half of this period was the time of 
 Brunelleschi's life there. 
 
 LINE 44 8 How 'twas I lived, 
 
 Nothing is known, save in the most general way, of Brunel 
 leschi's life in Rome ; but in visiting the city it is a most inter 
 esting and stimulating experience to center one's mind, for 
 a time, on what still exists there that was a part of Brunelles 
 chi's own knowledge. It is astonishing how fully and clearly 
 the character of the town, as he must have known it, may still 
 be made to emerge. 
 
 LINE 469 Round me cattle browsed 
 
 The Forum, in mediaeval and Renaissance times, was quite 
 outside the inhabited part of the town, in the fields, and was 
 known as " the cow-pasture " (campo vaccino). 
 
 LINE 476 giants, half their height 
 
 Awful up-turreting, 
 
 An allusion to Dante's lines : 
 Pero che, come in su la cerchia tonda 
 
 Montereggion di torri si corona, 
 
 Cosi la proda che il pozzo circonda, 
 Torreggiavan di mezza la persona 
 
 Gli orribili giganti, cui minaccia 
 
 Giove del cielo ancora, quando tuona. 
 
 INFERNO: Canto XXXI, lines 40-45. 
 
 87
 
 NOTES 
 
 LINE 505 
 
 The Amphitheater's o'erwhelming sweep 
 
 The Amphitheater was far more complete in Brunelleschi's 
 time than now. It was used all through the Renaissance as a 
 quarry whence the materials were obtained for building the pal 
 aces which sprang up soon after the return of the papal court. 
 
 LINE 539 the ends of earth 
 
 Together all were gathered up within 
 One fascicle of governance, 
 
 See Dante's lines : 
 
 Poi, presso al tempo che tutto il ciel voile 
 Ridur lo mondo a suo modo sereno, 
 Cesare, per voler di Roma, il tolle. 
 
 PARADISO: Canto VI, lines 55-57. 
 
 LINE 546 pagan priests 
 
 Did sanctify that temple to gods seven 
 
 The Pantheon was dedicated originally to Saturn, Jupiter, 
 Mercury, Apollo, Diana, Venus and Mars. 
 
 LINE 709 the great refusal 
 
 See Dante's lines : 
 
 Vidi e conobbi 1'ombra di colui 
 Che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto. 
 
 INFERNO: Canto HI, lines 59-60. 
 LINE 758 
 
 Reversing in perspective, vanisht down 
 
 Brunelleschi did much to perfect, if he did not actually in 
 vent, a method of perspective drawing, which until his time 
 had been little used. In particular he taught his method to 
 Masaccio, who profited greatly by it. 
 
 88
 
 NOTES 
 
 LINE 949 
 
 I had a crew of masons at the Dome 
 Gathered in secret 
 
 Vasari says these masons were not Florentines, but Lom 
 bards. 
 
 LlN * 978 The basket must be full, 
 
 Donatello had the amiable habit of keeping his money in 
 an open basket which hung in his workroom, and any friend 
 in need might help himself. 
 LINE 994 
 
 A lily whose frail petals turn aback 
 
 The lily figured on the coat of arms of Florence, whence 
 the cathedral took its name of Santa Maria del Fiore (of the 
 flower). 
 LINE 1006 
 
 The lady Gaddi's topknot? 
 
 This lady of the Gaddi family was only one of many who 
 made Brunelleschi's life miserable by their pertinacious and 
 conceited advocacy of designs by themselves, to replace the 
 exquisite conception of the architect. 
 LINE 1047 
 
 My tiny cell in Santa Croce's garth 
 
 The Capella, or Chapel, of the Pazzi family, erected by Bru- 
 nelleschi about 1430. The entrance is from the cloister. 
 LINE 1 06 1 
 
 Well-meaning Frank 
 
 Francesco della Luna, one of Brunelleschi's pupils and 
 assistants, to whom several of his designs were entrusted for 
 execution. Among these was the Spedale degli Innocenti, 
 
 8 9
 
 NOTES 
 
 which is not infrequently called the first work of Renaissance 
 architecture, having been begun about 1419. Francesco had it 
 in charge after 1427, and made certain changes in the design 
 during the course of construction which enraged Brunelleschi 
 when he perceived them, though friendly relations continued. 
 
 LINE 1086 
 
 The church of Santo Spirito, usually regarded as Brunelles- 
 chi's masterpiece, was begun in 1436, but not finished until 
 1482, thirty-six years after the architect's death, the work hav 
 ing been carried on under the direction of several successive 
 superintendents. 
 
 LINE 1089 
 
 The church of San Lorenzo, the reconstruction of which 
 under Brunelleschi was begun in 1425, still lacked its dome 
 at Brunelleschi's death. 
 
 LINE 1098 
 
 Rankles that smooth-faced house of Cosimo, 
 
 Cosimo de' Medici ( 1389-1464) had a model prepared for 
 his house by Brunelleschi, but rejected it on account of its size 
 and splendor, preferring the more modest design of Miche- 
 lozzo, though it is said he afterward regretted his choice. 
 
 LINE 1 103 
 
 Michelozzo ( Bartolommeo di Gherardo di Michelozzo 
 Michelozzi, 1396-1472), second only to Brunelleschi in archi 
 tecture among the latter's contemporaries. Michelozzo was 
 associated as architect with Donatello in many undertakings. 
 LINE 1133 
 
 Luca Pitti wished to surpass his powerful rival, Cosimo de' 
 Medici, in the splendor of his palace, with which desire 
 Brunelleschi worked in full sympathy. Before completing his 
 
 9
 
 NOTES 
 
 
 
 house, however, Pitti lost his wealth and power ; and the pal 
 ace eventually became the property and official residence of 
 the Medici family, thus justifying our architect's intuitions. 
 
 LlNE "53 the Torse, 
 
 Compact of vigorous antiquity, 
 Digged from Colonna's garden t'other day, 
 
 The fragment of antique Greek sculpture, now known as 
 the Torso of the Vatican, was unearthed from the Colonna 
 gardens in Rome not long before 1440. About this period 
 Pope Eugene IV (1431-1447) requested Cosimo de' Medici to 
 send an architect to him at Rome. Cosimo sent Brunelleschi, 
 saying that such was his greatness that " he would undertake 
 to move the world." The Pope was astonished at Brunelles- 
 chi's insignificant appearance. " So you can move the world ? " 
 "Verily, an you but furnish me a fulcrum for my lever!" 
 
 LINE 1261 
 
 Whose wont you know was flabby white, like worms 
 
 The most convincing portrait of Cosimo, in which the pale, 
 unwholesome look is emphasized, is part of Benozzo Gozzoli's 
 mural paintings in the private chapel of the Medici ( now the 
 Riccardi) Palace. 
 
 LINE 1482 as God looks down upon His world, 
 
 The handiwork He loves so well His eye 
 Parts never from it 
 
 The reference is to the following passage from Dante : 
 
 E li comincia a vagheggiar nell' arte 
 Di quel Maestro che dentro a se 1* ama 
 Tanto, che mai da lei 1' occhio non parte. 
 
 PARADISO: Canto X, lines 10-12. 
 
 9 1
 
 NOTES 
 
 LINE 1488 
 
 The church of San Miniato al Monte, built in the eleventh 
 century, is one of the finest examples of the Romanesque, or, 
 one might say, early Christian, basilica type north of Rome. 
 
 LINE 1498 when Cosimo 
 
 Gave me to build anew the rotting fane 
 Of San Lorenzo. 
 
 Strictly speaking, it was Giovanni de' Medici, Cosimo's 
 father, who had originally set Brunelleschi to work at San 
 Lorenzo, to rebuild the sacristy. On the death of Giovanni, 
 however, in 1429, Cosimo (in conjunction with several other 
 donors) continued and extended the employment to include 
 the entire reconstruction of the church. Both San Lorenzo 
 and Santo Spirito are strongly reminiscent of the basilica type 
 of church. 
 
 LINE 1525 
 
 The church of Santa Sabina was built about 425, and is, of 
 all the early Christian basilicas, the least changed from its 
 original character. Its ancient doors still retain their primitive 
 carvings, among which is what is reputed to be the oldest 
 extant crucifixion. 
 
 LINE 1537 Take thou a bit of wood 
 
 And fashion me that Agony ! " 
 
 When Donatello was a boy he carved a crucifix of wood 
 which now hangs in Santa Croce. Brunelleschi, on seeing it, 
 exclaimed that he had put a clown on the cross. Deeply cha 
 grined, Donatello cried, " Take wood and carve one for your 
 self, then ! " Brunelleschi accepted the challenge, and presently 
 asked Donatello in to see his crucifix, having meanwhile kept 
 his work a secret. Donatello was completely overcome with 
 
 92
 
 NOTES 
 
 the beauty of his friend's achievement, which is now in San 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 LINE 1685 I am he 
 
 That is so crusht by wrong that lust bursts out 
 For vengeance on the wronger 
 
 See Dante's lines : 
 
 Ed e chi per ingiuria par ch' adonti 
 Si, che si fa della vendetta ghiotto; 
 E tal convien che il male altrui impronti. 
 
 PURGATORIO : Canto XVII, lines 121-123. 
 LINE 1690 
 
 Sweet wormwood, 
 See Dante's words : 
 A ber lo dolce assenzio de' martiri 
 
 PURGATORIO: Canto XXIII, line 86. 
 LINE 1691 
 
 To balm the sore that healeth last of all. 
 See Dante's lines: 
 
 E questo modo credo che lor basti 
 
 Per tutto il tempo che il foco gli abbrucia : 
 Con tal cura convien, con cotai pasti 
 
 Che la piaga dassezzo si ricucia. 
 
 PURGATORIO: Canto XXV, lines 136-139. 
 
 93
 
 FOUR HUNDRED fcT EIGHTY COPIES 
 OF THIS BOOK WERE PRINTED BY 
 TAYLOR, NASH AND TAYLOR, SAN 
 FRANCISCO, IN NOVEMBER, 
 
 This Copy is
 
 D 00001'