I held you, or ever shall hold you.
Prosper and triumph still, for all me: you shall but do me honor,
Seeing that I too serve the art that your triumphs illustrate.
I for my part find life too short for work and for pleasure;
If it should touch a century's bound, I should think it too
precious
Even to spare a moment for rage at another's good fortune.
Do not be fooled by the purblind flatterers who would persuade you
Either of us shall have greater fame through the fall of the other.
We can thrive only in common. The tardily blossoming cycles,
Flowering at last in this glorious age of our art, had not waited,
Folded calyxes still, for Pordenone or Titian.
Think you if we had not been, our pictures had never been painted?
Others had done them, or better, the same. We are only
Pencils God paints with. And think you that He had wanted for
pencils
But for our being at hand? And yet--for some virtue creative
Dwells and divinely exists in the being of every creature,
So that the thing done through him is dear as if he had done it--
If I should see your power, a tint of this great efflorescence,
Fading, methinks I should feel myself beginning to wither.
They have abused your hate who told you that Titian was jealous.
Once, in my youth that is passed, I too had my hates and my envies.
'Sdeath! how it used to gall me--that power and depth of Giorgione!
I could have turned my knife in his heart when I looked at his
portraits.
Ah! we learn somewhat still as the years go. Now, when I see you
Doing this good work here, I am glad in my soul of its beauty.
Art is not ours, O friend! but if we are not hers, we are nothing.
Look at the face you painted last year--or yesterday, even:
Far, so far, it seems from you, so utterly, finally, parted,
Nothing is stranger to you than this child of your soul; and you
wonder--
'Did I indeed then do it?' No thrill of the rapture of doing
Stirs in your breast at the sight. Nay, then, not even the beauty
Which we had seemed to create is our own: the frame universal
Is as much ours. And shall I hate you because you are doing
That which when done you cannot feel yours more than I mine can feel
it?
It shall belong hereafter to all who perceive and enjoy it,
Rather than him who made it; he, least of all, shall enjoy it.
They of the Church conjure us to look on death and be humble;
I say,