its golden cry?
Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?

NOTES

"Pictor Ignotus" is a reverie characteristic of a monastic painter
of the Renaissance who recognizes, in the genius of a youth whose
pictures are praised, a gift akin to his own, but which he has never
so exercised, spite of the joy such free human expression and
recognition of his power would have given him, because he could not
bear to submit his art to worldly contact. So he has chosen to sink
his name in unknown service to the Church, and to devote his fancy
to pure and beautiful but cold and monotonous repetitions of sacred
themes. His gentle regret that his own pictures will moulder
unvisited is half wonderment that the youth can endure the sullying
of his work by secular fame.

67. Travertine: a white limestone, the name being a corruption of
<Tiburtinus>, from <Tibur> , now Tivoli, near Rome, whence this
stone comes.

FRA LIPPO LIPPI

1855

1 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, 10
<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! 20
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 their 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!) 30
And all's come square again. I'd like his face--
His, elbowing on his comrade in the door
With the pike