Mine's shaved, à monk, you say

- the sting's in that!

If Master Cosimo announced himself,
Mum's the word naturally; but a monk!
Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now!
I was a baby when my mother died

And father died and left me in the street.
I.starved there, God knows how, a year or two
On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,
Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day
My stomach being empty as your hat,

The wind doubled me up and down I went.
Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand,
(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew)

And so along the wall, over the bridge,

By the straight cut to the convent. Six words, there, While I stood munching my first bread that month : "So, boy, you're minded," quoth the good fat father Wiping his own mouth, 'twas refection-time,"To quit this very miserable world?

By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me;
I did renounce the world, its pride and greed,
Palace, farm, villa, shop and banking-house,
Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici

Have given their hearts to all at eight years old.
Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,
"Twas not for nothing-the good bellyful,

The warm serge and the rope that goes all round,

And day-long blessed idleness beside!
"Let's see what the urchin's fit for "
Not overmuch their way, I must confess.

that came next.

Such a to-do! they tried me with their books.
Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste!
Flower o' the clove,

All the Latin I construe is, "amo," I love!

But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets
Eight years together, as my fortune was,
Watching folk's faces to know who will fling
The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,
And who will curse or kick him for his pains —
Which gentleman processional and fine,
Holding a candle to the Sacrament

Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch
The droppings of the wax to sell again,

Or holla for the Eight and have him, whipped,-
How say I?
nay, which dog bites, which lets drop
His bone from the heap of offal in the street!

The soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,
He learns the look of things, and none the less
For admonitions from the hunger-pinch.

I had a store of such remarks, be sure,
Which, after I found leisure, turned to use:
I drew men's faces on my copy-books,
Scrawled them within the antiphonary's marge,
Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,
Found nose and eyes and chin for A.s and B.s,
And made a string of pictures of the world

Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun,

On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked

black.

"Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d'ye say?

In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark.

What if at last we get our man of parts,

We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese

And Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine

And put the front on it that ought to be!"

And hereupon they bade me daub away.

Thank you! my head being crammed, their walls a blank,

Never was such prompt disemburdening.

First, every sort of monk, the black and white,

I drew them, fat and lean: then, folks at church,
From good old gossips waiting to confess
Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends,
To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,
Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there
With the little children round him in a row
Of admiration, half for his beard and half
For that white anger of his victim's son
Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,
Signing himself with the other because of Christ
(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this
After the passion of a thousand years)

Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head
Which the intense eyes looked through, came at eve

On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf,

Her pair of ear-rings and a bunch of flowers
The brute took growling, prayed, and then was gone.
I painted all, then cried "'tis ask and have —
Choose, for more 's ready! laid the ladder flat,
And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall.
The monks closed in a circle and praised loud
Till checked, (taught what to see and not to see,
Being simple bodies) "that's the very man!
Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog!

That woman 's like the Prior's niece who comes

To care about his asthma: it's the life!"

But there my triumph's straw-fire flared and funked Their betters took their turn to see and say:

The Prior and the learned pulled a face

And stopped all that in no time. "How? what's here? Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all!

Faces, arms, legs and bodies like the true

As much as pea and pea! it's devil's-game!
Your business is not to catch men with show,
With homage to the perishable clay,

But lift them over it, ignore it all,

Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh.
Your business is to paint the souls of men
Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke.. no it's not..
It's vapour done up like a new-born babe-
(In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth)
It's.. well, what matters talking, it's the soul!
Give us no more of body than shows soul.
Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God!

That sets you praising,

why not stop with him?

Why put all thoughts of praise out of our heads
With wonder at lines, colours, and what not?
Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms!
Rub all out, try at it a second time.

Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts,
She's just my niece . . . Herodias, I would say,
Who went and danced and got men's heads cut off-
Have it all out!" Now, is this sense, I ask?
A fine way to paint soul, by painting body
must go further

So ill, the eye can't stop there,

-

And can't fare worse! Thus, yellow does for white When what you put for yellow's simply black,

And any sort of meaning looks intense

When all beside itself means and looks nought.
Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn,
Left foot and right foot, go a double step,
Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,
Both in their order? Take the prettiest face,
The Prior's niece patron-saint- is it so pretty

You can't discover if it means hope, fear,
Sorrow or joy? won't beauty go with these?
Suppose I've made her eyes all right and blue,
Can't I take breath and try to add life's flash,
And then add soul and heighten them threefold?
Or
say there's beauty with no soul at all
(1 never saw it-put the case the same -)
If you get simple beauty and nought else,
You get about the best thing God invents, -