<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116238" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Fra Lippo Lippi</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!<br>You need not clap your torches to my face.<br>Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk!<br>What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,<br>And here you catch me at an alley's end<br>Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?<br>The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up,<br>Do—harry out, if you must show your zeal,<br>Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,<br>And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, <br>Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company!<br>Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll take<br>Your hand away that's fiddling on my throat,<br>And please to know me likewise. Who am I?<br>Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend<br>Three streets off—he's a certain...how d'ye call?<br>Master—a...Cosimo of the Medici,<br>I' the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best!<br>Remember and tell me, the day you're hanged,<br>How you affected such a gullet's gripe! <br>But you, sir, it concerns you that your knaves<br>Pick up a manner nor discredit you:<br>Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streets<br>And count fair prize what comes into this net?<br>He's Judas to a tittle, that man is!<br>Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends.<br>Lord, I'm not angry! Bid your hangdogs go<br>Drink out this quarter-florin to the health<br>Of the munificent House that harbors me<br>(And many more beside, lads! more beside!) <br>And all's come square again. I'd like his face—<br>His, elbowing on his comrade in the door<br>With the pike and lantern—for the slave that holds<br>John Baptist's head a-dangle by the hair<br>With one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say)<br>And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped!<br>It's not your chance to have a bit of chalk,<br>A wood-coal or the like? or you should see!<br>Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so.<br>What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down, <br>You know them and they take you? like enough!<br>I saw the proper twinkle in your eye—<br>'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first.<br>Let's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.<br>Here's spring come, and the nights one makes up bands<br>To roam the town and sing out carnival,<br>And I've been three weeks shut within my mew,<br>A-painting for the great man, saints and saints<br>And saints again. I could not paint all night—<br>Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air. <br>There came a hurry of feet and little feet,<br>A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song—<br>Flower o' the broom,<br>Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!<br>Flower o' the quince,<br>I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?<br>Flower o' the thyme—and so on. Round they went.<br>Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter<br>Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight—three slim shapes,<br>And a face that looked up…zooks, sir, flesh and blood, <br>That's all I'm made of! Into shreds it went,<br>Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,<br>All the bed-furniture—a dozen knots,<br>There was a ladder! Down I let myself,<br>Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,<br>And after them. I came up with the fun<br>Hard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met—<br>Flower o' the rose,<br>If I've been merry, what matter who knows!<br>And so as I was stealing back again <br>To get to bed and have a bit of sleep<br>Ere I rise up tomorrow and go work<br>On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast<br>With his great round stone to subdue the flesh,<br>You snape me of the sudden. Ah, I see!<br>Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your head—<br>Mine's shaves—a monk, you say—the sting's in that!<br>If Master Cosimo announced himself,<br>Mum's the word naturally; but a monk!<br>Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now! <br>I was a baby when my mother died<br>And father died and left me in the street.<br>I starved there, God knows how, a year or two<br>On fig skins, melon parings, rinds and shucks,<br>Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day,<br>My stomach being empty as your hat,<br>The wind doubled me up and down I went.<br>Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand<br>(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew),<br>And so along the wall, over the bridge, <br>By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there,<br>While I stood munching my first bread that month:<br>"So, boy, you're minded," quoth the good fat father<br>Wiping his own mouth, 'twas refection time—<br>"To quit this very miserable world?<br>Will you renounce"…"the mouthful of bread?" thought I;<br>By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me;<br>I did renounce the world, its pride and greed,<br>Palace, farm, villa, shop, and banking house,<br>Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici <br>Have given their hearts to—all at eight years old.<br>Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,<br>'Twas not for nothing—the good bellyful,<br>The warm serge and the rope that goes all round,<br>And day-long blessed idleness beside!<br>"Let's see what the urchin's fit for"—that came next.<br>Not overmuch their way, I must confess.<br>Such a to-do! They tried me with their books:<br>Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste!<br>Flower o' the clove, <br>All the Latin I construe is "amo," I love!<br>But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets<br>Eight years together, as my fortune was,<br>Watching folk's faces to know who will fling<br>The bit of half-stripped grape bunch he desires,<br>And who will curse or kick him for his pains—<br>Which gentleman processional and fine,<br>Holding a candle to the Sacrament,<br>Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch<br>The droppings of the wax to sell again, <br>Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped—<br>How say I?—nay, which dog bites, which lets drop<br>His bone from the heap of offal in the street—<br>Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,<br>He learns the look of things, and none the less<br>For admonition from the hunger-pinch.<br>I had a store of such remarks, be sure,<br>Which, after I found leisure, turned to use.<br>I drew men's faces on my copy-books,<br>Scrawled them within the antiphonary's marge, <br>Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,<br>Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's,<br>And made a string of pictures of the world<br>Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun,<br>On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black.<br>"Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out d'ye say?<br>In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark.<br>What if at least we get our man of parts,<br>We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese<br>And Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine <br>And put the front on it that ought to be!"<br>And hereupon he bade me daub away.<br>Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank,<br>Never was such prompt disemburdening.<br>First, every sort of monk, the black and white,<br>I drew them, fat and lean: then, folk at church,<br>From good old gossips waiting to confess<br>Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends,—<br>To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,<br>Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there <br>With the little children round him in a row<br>Of admiration, half for his beard and half<br>For that white anger of his victim's son<br>Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,<br>Signing himself with the other because of Christ<br>(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this<br>After the passion of a thousand years)<br>Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head,<br>(Which the intense eyes looked through) came at eve<br>On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf, <br>Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers<br>(The brute took growling), prayed, and so was gone.<br>I painted all, then cried "’Tis ask and have;<br>Choose, for more's ready!"—laid the ladder flat,<br>And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall.<br>The monks closed in a circle and praised loud<br>Till checked, taught what to see and not to see,<br>Being simple bodies,—"That's the very man!<br>Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog!<br>That woman's like the Prior's niece who comes <br>To care about his asthma: it's the life!"<br>But there my triumph's straw-fire flared and funked;<br>Their betters took their turn to see and say:<br>The Prior and the learned pulled a face<br>And stopped all that In no time. "How? what's here?<br>Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all!<br>Faces, arms, legs and bodies like the true<br>As much as pea and pea! it's devil's-game!<br>Your business is not to catch men with show,<br>With homage to the perishable clay, <br>But lift them over it, ignore it all,<br>Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh.<br>Your business is to paint the souls of men—<br>Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke…no, it's not…<br>It's vapor done up like a new-born babe—<br>(In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth)<br>It's…well, what matters talking, it's the soul!<br>Give us no more of body than shows soul!<br>Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God,<br>That sets us praising,—why not stop with him? <br>Why put all thoughts of praise out of our head<br>With wonder at lines, colors, and what not?<br>Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms!<br>Rub all out, try at it a second time.<br>Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts,<br>She's just my niece…Herodias, I would say,—<br>Who went and danced and got men's heads cut off!<br>Have it all out!" Now, is this sense, I ask?<br>A fine way to paint soul, by painting body<br>So ill, the eye can't stop there, must go further <br>And can't fare worse! Thus, yellow does for white<br>When what you put for yellow's simply black<br>And any sort of meaning looks intense<br>When all beside itself means and looks naught.<br>Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn,<br>Left foot and right foot, go a double step,<br>Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,<br>Both in their order? Take the prettiest face,<br>The Prior's niece…patron-saint—is it so pretty<br>You can't discover if it means hope, fear, <br>Sorrow or joy? won't beauty go with these?<br>Suppose I've made her eyes all right and blue,<br>Can't I take breath and try to add life's flash,<br>And then add soul and heighten them three-fold?<br>Or say there's beauty with no soul at all—<br>(I never saw it—put the case the same—)<br>If you get simple beauty and naught else,<br>You get about the best thing God invents:<br>That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed,<br>Within yourself, when you return him thanks. <br>"Rub all out!" Well, well, there's my life, in short,<br>And so the thing has gone on ever since.<br>I'm grown a man no doubt, I've broken bounds:<br>You should not take a fellow eight years old<br>And make him swear to never kiss the girls.<br>I'm my own master, paint now as I please—<br>Having a friend, you see, in the Corner-house!<br>Lord, it's fast holding by the rings in front—<br>Those great rings serve more purposes than just<br>To plant a flag in, or tie up a horse! 230<br>And yet the old schooling sticks, the old grave eyes<br>Are peeping o'er my shoulder as I work,<br>The heads shake still—"It's art's decline, my son!<br>You're not of the true painters, great and old;<br>Brother Angelico's the man, you'll fine;<br>Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer:<br>Fag on at flesh, you'll never make the third!"<br>Flower o' the pine,<br>You keep your mistr…manners, and I'll stick to mine!<br>I'm not the third, then: bless us, they must know! <br>Don't you think they're the likeliest to know,<br>They with their Latin? So, I swallow my rage,<br>Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paint<br>To please them—sometimes do and sometimes don't;<br>For, doing most, there's pretty sure to come<br>A turn, some warm eve finds me at my saints—<br>A laugh, a cry, the business of the world—<br>(Flower o' the peach,<br>Death for us all, and his own life for each!)<br>And my whole soul revolves, the cup runs over, <br>The world and life's too big to pass for a dream,<br>And I do these wild things in sheer despite,<br>And play the fooleries you catch me at,<br>In pure rage! The old mill-horse, out at grass<br>After hard years, throws up his stiff heels so,<br>Although the miller does not preach to him<br>The only good of grass is to make chaff.<br>What would men have? Do they like grass or no—<br>May they or mayn't they? all I want's the thing<br>Settled forever one way. As it is, <br>You tell too many lies and hurt yourself:<br>You don't like what you only like too much,<br>You do like what, if given you at your word,<br>You find abundantly detestable.<br>For me, I think I speak as I was taught;<br>I always see the garden and God there<br>A-making man's wife: and, my less learned,<br>The value and significance of flesh,<br>I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> You understand me: I'm a beast, I know. <br>But see, now—why, I see as certainly<br>As that the morning-star's about to shine,<br>What will hap some day. We've a youngster here<br>Comes to our convent, studies what I do,<br>Slouches and stares and lets no atom drop:<br>His name is Guidi—he'll not mind the monks—<br>They call him Hulking Tom, he lets them talk—<br>He picks my practice up—he'll paint apace,<br>I hope so—though I never live so long,<br>I know what's sure to follow. You be judge! <br>You speak no Latin more than I, belike;<br>However, you're my man, you've seen the world<br>—The beaty and the wonder and the power,<br>The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades,<br>Changes, surprises—and God made it all!<br>—For what? Do you feel thankful, ay or no,<br>For this fair town's face, yonder river's line,<br>The mountain round it and the sky above,<br>Much more the figures of man, woman, child,<br>These are the frame to? What's it all about? <br>To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon,<br>Wondered at? oh, this last of course!—you say.<br>But why not do as well as say,—paint it these<br>Just as they are, careless what comes of it?<br>God's works—paint any one, and count it crime<br>To let a truth slip. Don't object, "His works<br>Are here already; nature is complete:<br>Suppose you reproduce her—(which you can't)<br>There's no advantage! You must beat her, then."<br>For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love <br>First when we see them painted, things we have passed<br>Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;<br>And so they are better, painted—better to us,<br>Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;<br>God uses us to help each other so,<br>Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now,<br>Your cullion's hanging face? A bit of chalk,<br>And trust me but you should, though! How much more,<br>If I drew higher things with the same truth!<br>That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place, <br>Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh,<br>It makes me mad to see what men shall do<br>And we in our graves! This world's no blot for us,<br>Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:<br>To find its meaning is my meat and drink.<br>"Ay, but you don't so instigate to prayer!"<br>Strikes in the Prior: "when your meaning's plain<br>It does not say to folk—remember matins,<br>Or, mind you fast next Friday!" Why, for this<br>What need of art at all? A skull and bones, <br>Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or, what's best,<br>A bell to chime the hour with, does as well.<br>I painted a Saint Laurence six months since<br>At Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style:<br>"How looks my painting, now the scaffold's down?"<br>I ask a brother: "Hugely," he returns—<br>"Already not one phiz of your three slaves<br>Who turn the Deacon off his toasted side,<br>But's scratched and prodded to our heart's content,<br>The pious people have so eased their own <br>With coming to say prayers there in a rage:<br>We get on fast to see the bricks beneath.<br>Expect another job this time next year,<br>For pity and religion grow i' the crowd—<br>Your painting serves its purpose!" Hang the fools!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> —That is—you'll not mistake an idle word<br>Spoke in a huff by a poor monk, God wot,<br>Tasting the air this spicy night which turns<br>The unaccustomed head like Chianti wine!<br>Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now! <br>It's natural a poor monk out of bounds<br>Should have his apt word to excuse himself:<br>And hearken how I plot to make amends.<br>I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece<br>…There's for you! Give me six months, then go, see<br>Something in Sant' Ambrogio's! Bless the nuns!<br>They want a cast o' my office. I shall paint<br>God in the midst, Madonna and her babe,<br>Ringed by a bowery flowery angel-brood,<br>Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet <br>As puff on puff of grated orris-root<br>When ladies crowd to Church at midsummer.<br>And when i' the front, of course a saint or two—<br>Saint John, because he saves the Florentines,<br>Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and white<br>The convent's friends and gives them a long day,<br>And Job, I must have him there past mistake,<br>The man of Uz (and Us without the z,<br>Painters who need his patience). Well, all these<br>Secured at their devotion, up shall come <br>Out of a corner when you least expect,<br>As one by a dark stair into a great light,<br>Music and talking, who but Lippo! I!—<br>Mazed, motionless and moonstruck—I'm the man!<br>Back I shrink—what is this I see and hear?<br>I, caught up with my monk's-things by mistake,<br>My old serge gown and rope that goes all round,<br>I, in this presence, this pure company!<br>Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape?<br>Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing <br>Forward, puts out a soft palm—"Not so fast!"<br>—Addresses the celestial presence, "nay—<br>He made you and devised you, after all,<br>Though he's none of you! Could Saint John there draw—<br>His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?<br>We come to brother Lippo for all that,<br>Iste perfecit opus!" So, all smile—<br>I shuffle sideways with my blushing face<br>Under the cover of a hundred wings<br>Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay <br>And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,<br>Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops<br>The hothead husband! Thus I scuttle off<br>To home safe bench behind, not letting go<br>The palm of her, the little lily thing<br>That spoke the good word for me in the nick,<br>Like the Prior's niece…Saint Lucy, I would say.<br>And so all's saved for me, and for the church<br>A pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence!<br>Your hand, sir, and good-bye: no lights, no lights! <br>The street's hushed, and I know my own way back,<br>Don't fear me! There's the gray beginning. Zooks!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Robert+Browning">Robert Browning</a> from <i>Men and Women</i><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116238" data-title="Fra Lippo Lippi de Robert Browning" data-description="I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!/You need not clap your torches to my face./Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk!/What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,/And here you catch me at an alley's end/Where sportive ladies lea..."></div> </div> </div>

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