A bellyful is a bellyful.
quote by Francois Rabelais
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
A bellyful is a bellyful, whether it be meat or drink.
The rat does not leave the cat's house with a bellyful.
When the pig has had a bellyful it upsets the trough.
The mouse does not leave the cat's house with a bellyful.
Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
quote by Henry Miller
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.
quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Found poem 6
Brace up for a bellyful time today,
February 5—it’s Super Sunday!
Did you know that after Thanksgiving
it’s on this day that
maximum food is consumed
in America?
Hey, so what are your
plans for the day?
poem by Michael Shepherd
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Clouds By Number
Cloud Nine lived a life of fantasy,
Barely conceding the existence of Cloud Eight,
Who felt jealousy for Cloud Seven's
Silver lining,
Although it was saturnine.
Cloud Six lived a life in a daze,
Dozing in the sun's rays;
While Cloud Five held a bellyful of rain
That it wept onto
The arid plain.
Cloud Four came out of nowhere,
Hugging Cloud Three,
Making way, hurriedly, for Cloud Two,
Who shot lightning and thunder,
And like a magic trick
Became Cloud One.
The Great Funnel Cloud,
Who left nothing after its short reign
But a painful memory and a swollen path to be filled with regrets.
poem by Stan Petrovich
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Not From This Anger
Not from this anger, anticlimax after
Refusal struck her loin and the lame flower
Bent like a beast to lap the singular floods
In a land strapped by hunger
Shall she receive a bellyful of weeds
And bear those tendril hands I touch across
The agonized, two seas.
Behind my head a square of sky sags over
The circular smile tossed from lover to lover
And the golden ball spins out of the skies;
Not from this anger after
Refusal struck like a bell under water
Shall her smile breed that mouth, behind the mirror,
That burns along my eyes.
poem by Dylan Thomas
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A Father Is
A father is someone who is always strong
He makes you feel better when everything has gone wrong
He'll make you laugh he'll make you cry
He wants you to marry the right kind of guy
A father will take you to watch the cricket match down the street
He'll carry you on his soulder to the next soccer meet
He'll buy you a bellyful on a hot summer's day
He'll bring KFC at night if mom says it's ok
A father is loveable he can be lots of fun
But don't take him for granted or soon all the fun will be done
He'll lay down the rules he will not make you act the fool
He is the ultimate in cool
A happy father's day to dads young and old
You're worth all of life's treasures much more than gold
If anyone should ask what makes you unique
Tell them that God gave you a special technique
To love your children and adore
The good and bad that come to the fore
poem by Mitzie Thorne
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To The Ocean
It's thou dawning horizone
That dots the first sindhur
Lambent on earth's crinion
Bubbling with waving freshener
It's thee in morntide light
Bumpy-bumpy-busy wavering-
Over a pretext for a breakfast
As if it is earth-heaven's wedding
It's thee on slumbering nap
With bellyful salty food and aqua
Under sunny shade in a wavy trap
As if feasted in meridian awe
Plentiful thee, in plentiful harmony
For plentiful people along the border
Thou rollers in tender melody-
Seems a warm evening wedding- splendour
And thee! why so awful
In sunless hours in spumy fear?
Sembling a human life frightful?
poem by Indira Renganathan
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The Bees and Flies
A Farmer of the Augustan Age
Perused in Virgil's golden page
The story of the secret won
From Proteus by Cyrene's son--
How the dank sea-god showed the swain
Means to restore his hives again.
More briefly, how a slaughtered bull
Breeds honey by the bellyful.
The egregious rustic put to death
A bull by stopping of its breath,
Disposed the carcass in a shed
With fragrant herbs and branches spread,
And, having well performed the charm,
Sat down to wait the promised swarm.
Nor waited long. The God of Day
Impartial, quickening with his ray
Evil and good alike, beheld
The carcass--and the carcass swelled.
Big with new birth the belly heaves
Beneath its screen of scented leaves.
Past any doubt, the bull conceives!
The farmer bids men bring more hives
To house the profit that arrives;
Prepares on pan and key and kettle,
Sweet music that shall make 'em settle;
But when to crown the work he goes,
Gods! What a stink salutes his nose!
Where are the honest toilers? Where
The gravid mistress of their care?
A busy scene, indeed, he sees,
But not a sign or sound of bees.
Worms of the riper grave unhid
By any kindly coffin-lid,
Obscene and shameless to the light,
Seethe in insatiate appetite,
Through putrid offal, while above
The hissing blow-fly seeks his love,
Whose offspring, supping where they supt,
Consume corruption twice corrupt.
poem by Rudyard Kipling
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The Frog Prince
Frau Doktor,
Mama Brundig,
take out your contacts,
remove your wig.
I write for you.
I entertain.
But frogs come out
of the sky like rain.
Frogs arrive
With an ugly fury.
You are my judge.
You are my jury.
My guilts are what
we catalogue.
I’ll take a knife
and chop up frog.
Frog has not nerves.
Frog is as old as a cockroach.
Frog is my father’s genitals.
Frog is a malformed doorknob.
Frog is a soft bag of green.
The moon will not have him.
The sun wants to shut off
like a light bulb.
At the sight of him
the stone washes itself in a tub.
The crow thinks he’s an apple
and drops a worm in.
At the feel of frog
the touch-me-nots explode
like electric slugs.
Slime will have him.
Slime has made him a house.
Mr. Poison
is at my bed.
He wants my sausage.
He wants my bread.
Mama Brundig,
he wants my beer.
He wants my Christ
for a souvenir.
Frog has boil disease
and a bellyful of parasites.
He says: Kiss me. Kiss me.
And the ground soils itself.
Why
should a certain
quite adorable princess
be walking in her garden
at such a time
and toss her golden ball
up like a bubble
and drop it into the well?
It was ordained.
Just as the fates deal out
the plague with a tarot card.
Just as the Supreme Being drills
holes in our skulls to let
the Boston Symphony through.
But I digress.
A loss has taken place.
The ball has sunk like a cast-iron pot
into the bottom of the well.
Lost, she said,
my moon, my butter calf,
my yellow moth, my Hindu hare.
Obviously it was more than a ball.
Balls such as these are not
for sale in Au Bon Marché.
I took the moon, she said,
between my teeth
and now it is gone
and I am lost forever.
A thief had robbed by day.
Suddenly the well grew
thick and boiling
and a frog appeared.
His eyes bulged like two peas
and his body was trussed into place.
Do not be afraid, Princess,
he said, I am not a vagabond,
a cattle farmer, a shepherd,
a doorkeeper, a postman
or a laborer.
I come to you as a tradesman.
I have something to sell.
Your ball, he said,
for just three things.
Let me eat from your plate.
Let me drink from your cup.
Let me sleep in your bed.
She thought, Old Waddler,
those three you will never do,
but she made the promises
with hopes for her ball once more.
He brought it up in his mouth
like a tricky old dog
and she ran back to the castle
leaving the frog quite alone.
That evening at dinner time
a knock was heard on the castle door
and a voice demanded:
King’s youngest daughter,
let me in. You promised;
now open to me.
I have left the skunk cabbage
and the eels to live with you.
The kind then heard her promise
and forced her to comply.
The frog first sat on her lap.
He was as awful as an undertaker.
Next he was at her plate
looking over her bacon
and calves’ liver.
We will eat in tandem,
he said gleefully.
Her fork trembled
as if a small machine
had entered her.
He sat upon the liver
and partook like a gourmet.
The princess choked
as if she were eating a puppy.
From her cup he drank.
It wasn’t exactly hygienic.
From her cup she drank
as if it were Socrates’ hemlock.
Next came the bed.
The silky royal bed.
Ah! The penultimate hour!
There was the pillow
with the princess breathing
and there was the sinuous frog
riding up and down beside her.
I have been lost in a river
of shut doors, he said,
and I have made my way over
the wet stones to live with you.
She woke up aghast.
I suffer for birds and fireflies
but not frogs, she said,
and threw him across the room.
Kaboom!
Like a genie coming out of a samovar,
a handsome prince arose in the
corner of her bedroom.
He had kind eyes and hands
and was a friend of sorrow.
Thus they were married.
After all he had compromised her.
He hired a night watchman
so that no one could enter the chamber
and he had the well
boarded over so that
never again would she lose her ball,
that moon, that Krishna hair,
that blind poppy, that innocent globe,
that madonna womb.
poem by Anne Sexton
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A Vision Of Grief In The World
A vision of grief in the world, so vast and varied,
so intimately specific, so peculiar to each one of us,
we stratify it in our brains like the fossil shapes
of wavelengths and membranes layered
like the flying carpets of the Burgess Shale
or the sediment of a mindstream slowing down
to deposit itself in the book of experience.
Things we couldn't understand at the time
and still don't, turmoils of stardust
that fogged our clarity up like a windshield
and taught the heart that feeling
cannot only be a chandelier but a chainsaw
in an old growth forest as well
no matter how many nails for the best of reasons
you drive into the messiah you're trying to save.
We're always pouring mirages into
the white gold goblets of the moon
and confusing our lunancy
with the hilarity of being drunk enough
to delude us into thinking we've escaped our sorrow
by covering our eyes to outrun the light.
Sometimes I can look at a housefly missing one wing,
rowing in circles on its back on a windowsill,
and my heart overwhelms me with a flashflood of tears
rising from an unknown watershed deep inside,
a subliminal empathy for everything that is lost,
broken, and alone, seriously alone, when
they turn the lights out in the labyrinth for the night,
and the wounded lab rats settle down
in the corners of their cages with their backs
up against the wall, until tommorow when
the lights go on again like a Pavlovian dawn,
and the savage humans come with their tormentive deaths
to kill the way they kill each other
with expedience and enlightened self interest
that whisper like contractors in the shadows
of pleonastic alibis for perpetual war against the world.
No less susceptible than I have been all along
to what is emerging like a dark harmony from my confusion,
my well-informed bafflement, this road I've been walking
like a revolution on crutches ever since we lost,
as if there were no other way but love and understanding
even when you're ready, six times a day
to concede defeat without giving your assent
to the way chaos turned out in retrospect. Time
sweetens the apple into an approximately habitable planet
even if it's not Eden, and peace beguiles the soul
like someone left alone too long to the intimacy of their solitude
but the sadness of a seasoned overview mingles
in the sugars of life as well, and the heart, the heart
hangs heavily in space with no sight of a planet
under its feet anymore, except the abyss of it all
with nothing to fall toward or away from anymore.
A black sheep shepherd moon with nowhere to pasture
in the starfields on the back slopes of the world mountain,
with nothing to graze on but the symbols
that swarm its breakthrough into the available dimensions
of a future that can't happen a while longer without it.
Human nature, an alloy of the highest and the lowest,
a three-edged sword, drawn like iron and blood out of the ore,
folded and hammered on the anvils of the stars
and tempered in the valleys of the fireflies
where cooler heads prevail, or the nib
of a silver plough farming the dark side of the moon
as if it were seeding sacred syllables in its wake
hoping they would spread like the hermetic lunacy
of tryng to make bread to share with those who hunger,
out of wildflowers. I was born with a bellyful of those
who try to make what people need seem as beautiful
as the gaping aviomantic fountainmouths they never feed.
Michelangelo at Sotheby's, Shakespeare at the Bodleian,
how many families could culture sustain
if it actually got as real as grain in their bloodstreams,
instead of auctioning off the windows
as if Galileo painted something as obscene
upon the corrective lenses of his Dutch telescope
as pockmarks on the moon and sunspots on perfections
as one cardinal suggested he did
instead of looking as far as any of these three
into what is well beyond any of us to comprehend and forgive
insomuch if it's done unto these,
it's done unto the rest of us as well?
We should worry about a lot more than just cholesterol
placking the heart at its tinkling soirees
suggestively pointing out the gestures
of meaningful insignificance that beset our labours.
We should check out, to maintain our own well being,
whether our art has a green thumb or not,
or we're just leaving
the crumbs of our dreams in the corners
of other people's eyes to nibble their way
out of a dark wood into the threshed gardens
and empty silos that ring as hollow as a carillon of bells
summoning a sad, sad seance to leave ghost food out for the dead.
poem by Patrick White
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I Keep Returning To This Line In My Childhood
I keep returning to this line in my childhood
I once stood in one dreaded day
every month with my mother
to prove I was loyal and reliable,
waiting for food at what was
back in the late fifties
called the Foodstall.
Though we were not animals.
We were simply poor
at the mercy of the God-wielding charities
and though it’s nowhere near the same degree
as it is of kind, we almost felt
like natives in the hands of the Catholic church.
Mostly separated mothers left in the lurch of love
with two or three whining kids
that were plague rats of measles,
mumps, ringworm, and cold sores,
agitated as electrons wanting to jump orbitals.
Natives, dried-out rummies
with faces like desiccated orange peels,
more alcoholics than druggies back in those days,
the addle-brained with psyches like quicksand
they kept falling into, some lambs
and some the tigers
that wouldn’t lie down with them.
Lonely bachelors that came out
of their self-imposed exiles
once a month to this lottery of foodstuffs
they carried home in a big brown
Vancouver refinery two ply paper white sugar bag
stitched together like the parched skins of mummies,
as if they were carrying a woman back to their place
like one of the Sabine maidens they’d snatched
to populate Rome with their solitude.
Women with too much make-up on,
a lot of them bruised,
their black eyes waxing from dark blue
to the festering yellow of ruined orchids,
as my mother’s used to
before my old man left for good.
A few boisterous madames
with chameleonic hair
that changed colour every month,
laughing and talking too loud
as if to show the more righteous among mothers
how free and flamboyant and flaunting they were
in the face of anyone’s disapproval,
as if they always had a trick up their sleeve,
though that wasn’t always the case
or they wouldn’t be standing there with us.
I keep returning to this line in my childhood
as if it held me no matter
how hard I’ve struggled to get off it
like a spinal cord tied to a kite and a key
that’s dangerously exposed to the lightning.
Shame. Humiliation. Guilt.
Though God knows for what
when you’re a child
trying to figure out what you did,
thinking you must be evil because you can’t.
Three hundred people lined up for hours
like a caterpillar that went around the block
exposed to public scrutiny
that felt it had a right to stare
because they were doing their share
and from the looks of things, we weren’t.
though I saw what bleach can do
to a woman’s knees and knuckles
when she was trying to raise four kids
by scrubbing a rich woman’s floors.
There are bitter moments in life
that can burn holes in your heart
like the Taliban splashing acid
in the eyes of a young girl who can read.
My mother could paint.
But not with her hands bleeding and raw.
Not with her mind and heart
scorched with anxiety
like a hot iron branding an ironing board
like another steer in the herd.
Even writing about it
I am depressed by the ferocity
of my boyish helplessness fifty years later,
as I stand beside her
to help her carry the bag home,
slabs of black bear meat
with tufts of hair still on it
haemorrhaging through the paper,
that would rip open
like the stitching of a wound
in the side of the lunar bull of abundance
Mithras Tauroctonus killed,
partially bruised vegetables and fruit,
usually a small bag of day old donuts,
two loaves of bread, leprous margarine
with a packet of orange dye
to mix into it for a little local colour,
sugar and canned spaghetti,
macaroni with powdered cheese,
brown potatoes sprouting
virginal green tendrils for tails
that made them like giant sperm,
would come pouring out of it
and scatter all over the sidewalk
to deepen the spectacle
of our monthly fertility ritual.
Everything was second hand,
even our food.
Even the way we felt about ourselves
for living the way we had to.
Everything shabby, used, abused
with an aura of ruin about it
you couldn’t get out of your heart,
your psyche, your clothes,
like the smell of death
in the upholstery of a car
where someone had died at the wheel
at the side of the road three days ago.
Street shrinks by seven,
pessimist philosophers by eleven,
even the children reeking of experience,
their innocence rooted like mushrooms
that came up overnight
in the compost heaps of life.
I stood like a pawn beside
the dethroned queen of my mother
and thought one day all this will be reversed
and those who were blessed
and didn’t pass it on
would later be cursed for realizing
too late the hard way,
that you really can’t hang on to anything
in this world of change,
this cosmic hour glass
shaped like lungs,
the valves of the heart
that keep reversing themselves,
that you haven’t already given away
just like your last breath
to make room for more.
Even in the spring,
even in the sweltering heat of summer,
wet winter days when the leaves
were plastered like collages
of artists in despair to the sidewalks,
after the cross burnt the scarecrow
as the strawdog of an idolatrous heretic,
we were always the last birds allowed in
to glean what was left of Eden,
before the hunger of winter
closed it down again and the tourists
went home to their homelessness with the poor.
And the seagulls and the mice
and the feral cats and the rats
that always seemed to have
so much more right to be there than we did
waiting for the loaves and fishes
to be broken on the hillside
though we were made to stand for hours
on heel-numbing cement designed
to torment your feet by standing
in place too long as the line
inched its way up the the front
like a millipede of people
growing nasty and impatient
to get what they needed to get
of what was left, then get gone
as fast as they could not to belong
to the bottom feeders in the same lifeboat
they’ve just been standing among.
And though my mother didn’t say much,
standing there in her isolationist silence,
there was always a troupe
of housewives in kerchiefs,
turning the trivial gossip of a reality show
into a running sore soap opera
they improvised from one end of the line
right up to the time the door opened
to let them in and they left the stage
to get down to the serious busy
of picking out the best turnips
and the less stale loaves of bread
suspecting the Elk’s Lodge ladies
had stashed the freshest for themselves
as a spiritual perk for all their altruism
that remotely tasted like vinegar
mixed with the deathly sweetness
of the canned milk of human kindness
as if one too many flies and angels
had dipped their wings in it
so that by the time it got to us
or we to it, it was an albino oil slick
from a cow that jumped over the moon
in total eclipse. Circus tricks,
hoops of fire with ringmasters
the barnyard made the caged tigers
jump through once a month
through the endless zeroes
of a slinky wound around the block
that had swallowed all of us heart first
like a multi-headed hydra
with a bellyful of hungry people
in a line that’s only grown longer over the years.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Fra Lippo Lippi
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 leave their doors ajar?
The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up,
Do—harry out, if you must show your zeal,
Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,
And nip each softling of a wee white mouse,
Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company!
Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll take
Your hand away that's fiddling on my throat,
And please to know me likewise. Who am I?
Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend
Three streets off—he's a certain...how d'ye call?
Master—a...Cosimo of the Medici,
I' the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best!
Remember and tell me, the day you're hanged,
How you affected such a gullet's gripe!
But you, sir, it concerns you that your knaves
Pick up a manner nor discredit you:
Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streets
And count fair prize what comes into this net?
He's Judas to a tittle, that man is!
Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends.
Lord, I'm not angry! Bid your hangdogs go
Drink out this quarter-florin to the health
Of the munificent House that harbors me
(And many more beside, lads! more beside!)
And all's come square again. I'd like his face—
His, elbowing on his comrade in the door
With the pike and lantern—for the slave that holds
John Baptist's head a-dangle by the hair
With one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say)
And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped!
It's not your chance to have a bit of chalk,
A wood-coal or the like? or you should see!
Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so.
What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down,
You know them and they take you? like enough!
I saw the proper twinkle in your eye—
'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first.
Let's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.
Here's spring come, and the nights one makes up bands
To roam the town and sing out carnival,
And I've been three weeks shut within my mew,
A-painting for the great man, saints and saints
And saints again. I could not paint all night—
Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air.
There came a hurry of feet and little feet,
A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song—
Flower o' the broom,
Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!
Flower o' the quince,
I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?
Flower o' the thyme—and so on. Round they went.
Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter
Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight—three slim shapes,
And a face that looked up…zooks, sir, flesh and blood,
That's all I'm made of! Into shreds it went,
Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,
All the bed-furniture—a dozen knots,
There was a ladder! Down I let myself,
Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,
And after them. I came up with the fun
Hard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met—
Flower o' the rose,
If I've been merry, what matter who knows!
And so as I was stealing back again
To get to bed and have a bit of sleep
Ere I rise up tomorrow and go work
On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast
With his great round stone to subdue the flesh,
You snape me of the sudden. Ah, I see!
Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your head—
Mine's shaves—a 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?
Will you renounce"…"the mouthful of bread?" thought I;
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"—that came next.
Not overmuch their way, I must confess.
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—
Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,
He learns the look of things, and none the less
For admonition 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 eyes and nose 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 least 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 he bade me daub away.
Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank,
Never was such prompt disemburdening.
First, every sort of monk, the black and white,
I drew them, fat and lean: then, folk 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 earrings and a bunch of flowers
(The brute took growling), prayed, and so 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 vapor 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 us praising,—why not stop with him?
Why put all thoughts of praise out of our head
With wonder at lines, colors, 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
So ill, the eye can't stop there, must go further
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 naught.
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 three-fold?
Or say there's beauty with no soul at all—
(I never saw it—put the case the same—)
If you get simple beauty and naught else,
You get about the best thing God invents:
That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed,
Within yourself, when you return him thanks.
"Rub all out!" Well, well, there's my life, in short,
And so the thing has gone on ever since.
I'm grown a man no doubt, I've broken bounds:
You should not take a fellow eight years old
And make him swear to never kiss the girls.
I'm my own master, paint now as I please—
Having a friend, you see, in the Corner-house!
Lord, it's fast holding by the rings in front—
Those great rings serve more purposes than just
To plant a flag in, or tie up a horse! 230
And yet the old schooling sticks, the old grave eyes
Are peeping o'er my shoulder as I work,
The heads shake still—"It's art's decline, my son!
You're not of the true painters, great and old;
Brother Angelico's the man, you'll fine;
Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer:
Fag on at flesh, you'll never make the third!"
Flower o' the pine,
You keep your mistr…manners, and I'll stick to mine!
I'm not the third, then: bless us, they must know!
Don't you think they're the likeliest to know,
They with their Latin? So, I swallow my rage,
Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paint
To please them—sometimes do and sometimes don't;
For, doing most, there's pretty sure to come
A turn, some warm eve finds me at my saints—
A laugh, a cry, the business of the world—
(Flower o' the peach,
Death for us all, and his own life for each!)
And my whole soul revolves, the cup runs over,
The world and life's too big to pass for a dream,
And I do these wild things in sheer despite,
And play the fooleries you catch me at,
In pure rage! The old mill-horse, out at grass
After hard years, throws up his stiff heels so,
Although the miller does not preach to him
The only good of grass is to make chaff.
What would men have? Do they like grass or no—
May they or mayn't they? all I want's the thing
Settled forever one way. As it is,
You tell too many lies and hurt yourself:
You don't like what you only like too much,
You do like what, if given you at your word,
You find abundantly detestable.
For me, I think I speak as I was taught;
I always see the garden and God there
A-making man's wife: and, my less learned,
The value and significance of flesh,
I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards.
You understand me: I'm a beast, I know.
But see, now—why, I see as certainly
As that the morning-star's about to shine,
What will hap some day. We've a youngster here
Comes to our convent, studies what I do,
Slouches and stares and lets no atom drop:
His name is Guidi—he'll not mind the monks—
They call him Hulking Tom, he lets them talk—
He picks my practice up—he'll paint apace,
I hope so—though I never live so long,
I know what's sure to follow. You be judge!
You speak no Latin more than I, belike;
However, you're my man, you've seen the world
—The beaty and the wonder and the power,
The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades,
Changes, surprises—and God made it all!
—For what? Do you feel thankful, ay or no,
For this fair town's face, yonder river's line,
The mountain round it and the sky above,
Much more the figures of man, woman, child,
These are the frame to? What's it all about?
To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon,
Wondered at? oh, this last of course!—you say.
But why not do as well as say,—paint it these
Just as they are, careless what comes of it?
God's works—paint any one, and count it crime
To let a truth slip. Don't object, "His works
Are here already; nature is complete:
Suppose you reproduce her—(which you can't)
There's no advantage! You must beat her, then."
For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
And so they are better, painted—better to us,
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;
God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now,
Your cullion's hanging face? A bit of chalk,
And trust me but you should, though! How much more,
If I drew higher things with the same truth!
That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place,
Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh,
It makes me mad to see what men shall do
And we in our graves! This world's no blot for us,
Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:
To find its meaning is my meat and drink.
"Ay, but you don't so instigate to prayer!"
Strikes in the Prior: "when your meaning's plain
It does not say to folk—remember matins,
Or, mind you fast next Friday!" Why, for this
What need of art at all? A skull and bones,
Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or, what's best,
A bell to chime the hour with, does as well.
I painted a Saint Laurence six months since
At Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style:
"How looks my painting, now the scaffold's down?"
I ask a brother: "Hugely," he returns—
"Already not one phiz of your three slaves
Who turn the Deacon off his toasted side,
But's scratched and prodded to our heart's content,
The pious people have so eased their own
With coming to say prayers there in a rage:
We get on fast to see the bricks beneath.
Expect another job this time next year,
For pity and religion grow i' the crowd—
Your painting serves its purpose!" Hang the fools!
—That is—you'll not mistake an idle word
Spoke in a huff by a poor monk, God wot,
Tasting the air this spicy night which turns
The unaccustomed head like Chianti wine!
Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now!
It's natural a poor monk out of bounds
Should have his apt word to excuse himself:
And hearken how I plot to make amends.
I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece
…There's for you! Give me six months, then go, see
Something in Sant' Ambrogio's! Bless the nuns!
They want a cast o' my office. I shall paint
God in the midst, Madonna and her babe,
Ringed by a bowery flowery angel-brood,
Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet
As puff on puff of grated orris-root
When ladies crowd to Church at midsummer.
And when i' the front, of course a saint or two—
Saint John, because he saves the Florentines,
Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and white
The convent's friends and gives them a long day,
And Job, I must have him there past mistake,
The man of Uz (and Us without the z,
Painters who need his patience). Well, all these
Secured at their devotion, up shall come
Out of a corner when you least expect,
As one by a dark stair into a great light,
Music and talking, who but Lippo! I!—
Mazed, motionless and moonstruck—I'm the man!
Back I shrink—what is this I see and hear?
I, caught up with my monk's-things by mistake,
My old serge gown and rope that goes all round,
I, in this presence, this pure company!
Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape?
Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing
Forward, puts out a soft palm—"Not so fast!"
—Addresses the celestial presence, "nay—
He made you and devised you, after all,
Though he's none of you! Could Saint John there draw—
His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?
We come to brother Lippo for all that,
Iste perfecit opus!" So, all smile—
I shuffle sideways with my blushing face
Under the cover of a hundred wings
Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay
And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,
Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops
The hothead husband! Thus I scuttle off
To home safe bench behind, not letting go
The palm of her, the little lily thing
That spoke the good word for me in the nick,
Like the Prior's niece…Saint Lucy, I would say.
And so all's saved for me, and for the church
A pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence!
Your hand, sir, and good-bye: no lights, no lights!
The street's hushed, and I know my own way back,
Don't fear me! There's the gray beginning. Zooks!
poem by Robert Browning from Men and Women (1855)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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