Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;
The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,
And autumn grows, autumn in everything. 
Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape,
As if I saw alike my work and self
And all that I was born to be and do,
A twilight-piece.  Love, we are in God’s hand. 
How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; 50
So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! 
I feel he laid the fetter:  let it lie! 
This chamber for example—­turn your head—­
All that’s behind us!  You don’t understand
Nor care to understand about my art,
But you can hear at least when people speak: 
And that cartoon, the second from the door
—­It is the thing, Love! so such things should be—­
Behold Madonna!—­I am bold to say. 
I can do with my pencil what I know, 60
What I see, what at bottom of my heart
I wish for, if I ever wish so deep—­
Do easily, too—­when I say, perfectly,
I do not boast, perhaps:  yourself are judge,
Who listened to the Legate’s talk last week;
And just as much they used to say in France. 
At any rate ’tis easy, all of it! 
No sketches first, no studies, that’s long past: 
I do what many dream of, all their lives,
—­Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, 70
And fail in doing.  I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive—­you don’t know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,—­
Yet do much less, so much less.  Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter)—­so much less! 
Well, less is more, Lucrezia:  I am judged. 
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, 80
Heart, or whate’er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman’s hand of mine. 
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that’s shut to me,
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Tho’ they come back and cannot tell the world. 
My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here. 
The sudden blood of these men! at a word—­
Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too. 
I, painting from myself and to myself, 90
Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blame
Or their praise either.  Somebody remarks
Morello’s outline there is wrongly traced,
His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,
Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? 
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? 
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?  All is silver-gray,
Placid and perfect with my art:  the worse! 
I know both what I want and what might gain, 100
And yet how profitless to know, to sigh
“Had I been two, another and myself,
Our head would have o’erlooked the world!” No doubt.