or sure, the other dread.
Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
My soul, that turns to His great love on high,
Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread._

A second sonnet, enclosed in a letter to Vasari, runs as follows:--

_The fables of the world have filched away
The time I had for thinking upon God;
His grace lies buried 'neath oblivion's sod,
Whence springs an evil crop of sins alway._

_What makes another wise, leads me astray,
Slow to discern the bad path I have trod:
Hope fades, but still desire ascends that God
May free me from self-love, my sure decay.
Shorten half-way my road to heaven from earth!
Dear Lord, I cannot even half-way rise
Unless Thou help me on this pilgrimage.
Teach me to hate the world so little worth,
And, all the lovely things I clasp and prize,
That endless life, ere death, may be my wage._

While still in his seventieth year, Michelangelo had educated himself
to meditate upon the thought of death as a prophylactic against vain
distractions and the passion of love. "I may remind you that a man who
would fain return unto and enjoy his own self ought not to indulge so
much in merrymakings and festivities, but to think on death. This
thought is the only one which makes us know our proper selves, which
holds us together in the bond of our own nature, which prevents us
from being stolen away by kinsmen, friends, great men of genius,
ambition, avarice, and those other sins and vices which filch the man
from himself, keep him distraught and dispersed, without ever
permitting him to return unto himself and reunite his scattered parts.
Marvellous is the operation of this thought of death, which, albeit
death, by his nature, destroys all things, preserves and supports
those who think on death, and defends them from all human passions."
He supports this position by reciting a madrigal he had composed, to
show how the thought of death is the greatest foe to love:--

_Not death indeed, but the dread thought of death
Saveth and severeth
Me from the heartless fair who doth me slay:
And should, perchance, some day_
_The fire consuming blaze o'er measure bright,
I find for my sad plight
No help but from death's form fixed in my heart;
Since, where death reigneth, love must dwell apart._

In some way or another, then, Michelangelo used the thought of death
as the mystagogue of his spirit into t