Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure,
      Seeing that work and gain are gone; while he
      Who wears the robe, is my Medusa still. 
    Perchance in heaven poverty is a pleasure: 
      But of that better life what hope have we,
      When the blessed banner leads to nought but ill?

A third sonnet of this period is intended to be half burlesque, and, therefore, is composed a coda, as the Italians describe the lengthened form of the conclusion.  It was written while Michael Angelo was painting the roof of the Sistine, and was sent to his friend Giovanni da Pistoja.  The effect of this work, as Vasari tells us, on his eyesight was so injurious, that, for some time after its completion, he could only read by placing the book or manuscript above his head and looking up.[420]

I’ HO GIA FATTO UN GOZZO

    I’ve grown a goitre by dwelling in this den—­
      As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy,
      Or in what other land they hap to be—­
    Which drives the belly close beneath the chin: 
    My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in,
      Fixed on my spine:  my breast-bone visibly
      Grows like a harp:  a rich embroidery
    Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin. 
    My loins into my paunch like levers grind;
      My buttock like a crupper bears my weight;
      My feet unguided wander to and fro;

    In front my skin grows loose and long; behind,
      By bending it becomes more taut and strait;
      Backward I strain me like a Syrian bow: 
      Whence false and quaint, I know,
      Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye;
      For ill can aim the gun that bends awry. 
          Come then, Giovanni, try
      To succour my dead pictures and my fame;
      Since foul I fare and painting is my shame.

The majority of the sonnets are devoted to love and beauty, conceived in the spirit of exalted Platonism.  They are supposed to have been written in the latter period of his life, when he was about sixty years of age; and though we do not know for certain to whom they were in every case addressed, they may be used in confirmation of what I have said about his admiration for Vittoria Colonna and Tommaso Cavalieri.[421] The following, with its somewhat obscure adaptation of a Platonic theory of creation to his own art, was probably composed soon after Vittoria Colonna’s death.[422]

SE ’L MIO ROZZO MARTELLO

    When my rude hammer to the stubborn stone
      Gives human shape, now that, now this, at will,
      Following his hand who wields and guides it still,
    It moves upon another’s feet alone. 
    But He who dwells in heaven all things doth fill
      With beauty by pure motions of his own;
      And since tools fashion tools which else were none,
    His life makes all that lives with living skill.