n the parts of thee which are to fade
Thou hast the glory; I have only sight.
Fire from its heat you may not analyze,
Nor worship from eternal beauty take,
Which deifies the lover as he bows.
Thou hast that Paradise all within thine eyes
Where first I loved thee. 'T is for that love's sake
My soul's on fire with thine, beneath thy brows.

The German musicians of the seventeenth century used to write
voluntaries for the organ, using the shorthand of the older notation;
they jotted down the formulas of the successive harmonies expressed in
terms of the chords merely. The transitions and the musical explanation
were left to the individual performer. And Michael Angelo has left
behind him, as it were, the poetical equivalents of such shorthand
musical formulas. The harmonies are wonderful. The successions show a
great grasp of comprehension, but you cannot play them without filling
them out.

"Is that music, after all," one may ask, "which leaves so much to the
performer, and is that poetry, after all, which leaves so much to the
reader?" It seems you must be a Kapellmeister or a student, or
dilettante of some sort, before you can transpose and illustrate these
hieroglyphics. There is some truth in this criticism, and the modesty of
purpose in the poems is the only answer to it. They claim no comment.
Comment claims them. Call them not poetry if you will. They are a window
which looks in upon the most extraordinary nature of modern times,--a
nature whose susceptibility to impressions of form through the eye
allies it to classical times; a nature which on the emotional side
belongs to our own day.

Is it a wonder that this man was venerated with an almost superstitious
regard in Italy, and in the sixteenth century? His creations were
touched with a superhuman beauty which his contemporaries felt, yet
charged with a profoundly human meaning which they could not fathom. No
one epoch has held the key to him. There lives not a man and there never
has lived a man who could say, "I fully understand Michael Angelo's
works." It will be said that the same is true of all the very greatest
artists, and so it is in a measure. But as to the others, that truth
comes as an afterthought and an admission. As to Michael Angelo, it is
primary and overwhelming impression. "We are not sure that we comprehend
him," say the centuries as they pass, "but of this we are sure: _Simil
ne maggior uom non nacque mai_."