Classic Poem

SCENE : The living room of the Cellini house in Via C — — , Florence. A crackling fire of oak-sticks in the hearth. GIOVANNI CELLINI seated, and his daughter COSA spinning; later his son BENVENUTO .
— GIOVANNI . Has he come?
— COSA . Not yet.
— GIOV. The Campanile
Told seven awhile ago.
— COSA . He'll soon return.
No doubt Marchone is hurried, works him hard,
Or a late client rich and particular
Puts them to trouble.
— GIOV. No, Cosa, 't is not that,
Or if maybe to-day, not every day;
For every day he lingers and retards.
He shuns our fireside, he no more clings to
Our tedious home that loves him all too well, —
Headstrong and hard and haughty! Why even me,
Me that begot him, poor old father, me
He hates.
— COSA . Father!
— GIOV. Deny 't!
— COSA . I do, I do.
— GIOV. Why then can't he at evening, since he knows —
I taught him — so deliciously to run
The flute's heart-breaking scale, so tenderly
To use the grief of yonder clarinet —
Why does he grudge me? Oft in after time
These rough refusals and discourtesy
Cry down the winds of thought, and one by one
In sobs before our parents' grave, we rue
Our sordid sweetness.
— COSA . No, Sir, no! forgive him.
He's rough, is Benvenuto, and in nothing
Would pain you.
— GIOV. Why then refuse me so to play?
I'm old and cannot — " aged and unfit, "
So reads the act. O Cosa, 't was a stroke
When first I read it — I carry't always — here,
Here 't is! we'll read it over again once more:
" Whereas
" Giovanni of the Cellini, one
" O' the tibiccus or fifes to said republic,
" Is aged and unfit for playing, and
" On his age's account can hardly come
" And every day appear to play and do
" Service to said republic as required,
" Therefore
" They have deliberated " —
Here, Cosa, read!
The words become too long for my old eyes.
— COSA . Sir, you forget: I cannot read.
— GIOV. Well then!
" Deliberated and in deliberation
" Have carried and have all in all removed
" The aforesaid Giovanni of the Cellini " —
Why do they say, I wonder, all in all?
" From his said office of tibiccu or fife
" To said most high and honourable Lords.
" And because said Giovanni is poor and old,
" And has in their said palace service done
" Years six and thirty well and faithfully,
" Wishing therefor him somewhat to repay
" And tend his age and some support provide,
" Therefore have they decreed to same Giovanni
" The pension alms 't is usual to give
" Players of their said palace: pounds, to wit,
" Eight, of the little florins, every month
" During the said Giovanni's life. "
I'm old,
And like mine unrequired melody,
My part is over.
— COSA . A step — he's coming — now —
It dies away.
— GIOV. Yet he detests the flute!
Old as I am and poor, 't were a good life,
Tho' hard the wages, if at ending day
Good music by the candle sat — and his
Outsings by far Italy's loveliest.
I taught him: down upon the stops myself
I held his baby fingers. I'd divined
The perfect flutist in him, the lip and hands,
And stars of music in his big blue eyes.
This drawing he potters o'er at weary night,
Of groups and visionary postures framed
In scroll-work, while his feverish brain upreared
Hammer and tongs descends upon the ore;
This love of metals and design of forms —
You think him sculptor?
— COSA . Why, father, they say —
— GIOV. They say and push his obstination.
It happens oft our children misconceive
Their proper genius, and how much soe'er
We pull their error back to the good road,
They clench the bit and bolt. He's a musician.
— COSA . Yet in his fever — scarce he's now recovered —
Whene'er you spoke of music, how the pulse
Grew flurried! You remember! spare him.
— GIOV. Sure
I urge him to himself. He's a musician,
And proved it well, when in the Palace Hall,
We fifemen playing before the Signoria,
My little man was hoisted to the book,
And straddle upon the velvet shoulders of
The page-at-arms, his treble played away.
— COSA . He was eleven.
— GIOV. Ten, Cosa, ten — or nine,
But ten I swear to.
— COSA . All Florence rang of him.
— GIOV. O what a day when the organ pipes I made —
So full of angels that in recompense
Placed at Magnificent Lorenzo's word
On rushing wings they came tremendous down
Santa Maria Novella — how there they sang
On Benvenuto's baptism like a choir!
— COSA . Sir, played they at mine?
— GIOV. Come, daughter, in my arms.
In you they play forever.
I love to hear
An organ's fluttering base, a languid lute;
To hear the watered silver of a harp
Pass off in shower throughout the melody;
To hear a viol weeping — Cosa, I brought
Some old sticks homeward yesterday from work:
Go fetch them, from my closet, bundled in
My blouse. [ Exit COSA .]
The master-mason said to-day
I was too old, clumsy my work. Alas,
And Benvenuto of the goldsmith earns
Half what he might at music.
[ Enter COSA .]
— COSA . I cannot find them,
And in the closet is nothing, Sir, but clothes.
— GIOV. Lost then perhaps — but no! Still gainst my side
I feel them pinch; for weary 't is, the way
Thro' fallow fields from San Domenico.
I got them home! among them a certain piece
Of grain and fibre, and, by my knuckle rapped, so true!
Lost, no! impossible, for I hid them safe —
Good Jesus, by the chimney, Cosa, there —
[ He gets up from his chair and they both kneel down, sorting the rubbish .]
Some of them in the firewood! Where's my piece?
— COSA . Let me do't, father.
— GIOV. Ai, my old back and knees!
Where is my piece? the candle! O Virgin Mary,
It's lost.
— COSA . Here's more of them.
— GIOV. Yet not the one.
— COSA . Another.
— GIOV. Show me.
— COSA . Look, Sir.
— GIOV. Love, 't is found,
It is my piece, for sure, it is my piece.
Your mother, Cosa, is thrifty and virtuous,
Good housewife, clean and good, so very good, —
But for the arts her talent and regard
Were ever small. — Up, help me, daughter! up!
[ He gets back to his chair and sits whittling and singing snatches, while COSA resumes her spinning .]
My chair, and from the table drawer find me
My jackknife. Look, betimes this wretched board
In growing modulations will become
Half a viola, and well Luigi said
That such are music's silkworms.
— COSA [ aside ]. Benvenuto's
Uncommon late. He 'll not come back to-night.
— GIOV. She lingered by the river-bed ,
Dropped on a knee to levy
The swimming pitcher to her head .
— — Oh it was heavy!
The eyes of love are soon to fill
And quick is the breast to quiver .
A star hung over the olive-hill .
— — She said to me: " Never. "
In Campo Santo lives a grave
I and the moon together . —
I and the moon together —
I and the —

'T is always so: the memory of a song
First weakens at the end and the poor singer
Rushing the climax like a stormy bird
Feels for his voice and hears it die away.
As, Cosa, you were saying —
— COSA . I? Nothing, Sir.
— GIOV. Purple anemone ,
Why should the sunrise April morn
Gild and bedew thy petal torn?

My voice has much gone off, and by degrees
The mellow sureness of its register
Is shaken nearly all. I'll sing no more;
And then the viol throughout my merry life
I used and cannot play — the absent viol
Quite leaves the singer homesick and destroys
The foliage by the river of his theme.
I waited —
[ To himself .] This timber lost — 't was pity pitiful.
I waited for her near her farm
Close up beside a cypress tree .
The road lay white as linen by ,
And moonlight made the meadow warm .

She came, and as she came the air
Against her laid her veil and dress .
I held my brow for giddiness ,
My hands for fever. She was there .

She put her finger to her mouth
And down thro' olives led the way .
I followed while the bird of May
Sang down the branches on her youth .

Along the glade of dewy dark
I breathed her, she had gone before .
I ran, I heard a shutting door;
And soon the farm-dogs ceased to bark . —

Go, silly heart, and let me be .
The wind will show you round the hill;
Far down, the river turns a mill ,
They say beyond it is all sea .

Go where you will, go where you please .
What should I care? My heart is burned . —
Ah, God, if only she returned!
I 'd cry for pardon on my knees .
[A noise is heard on the stair .]
— COSA . It's he. —

— [ Enter BENVENUTO .]
God, brother, how you're ruffled, torn!

Across your forehead —
— BENVENUTO . Hush! give me a dish —
Beans, mush — What have you? I'm hungry.
— GIOV. But, my son,
Your forehead's —
— BEN. Scratched, Sir: nothing. Let me be.
— GIOV. Cosa, give him a soup. You're bleeding, boy.
Cosa, a sponge. What was't?
— BEN. I said, Sir, nothing.
— GIOV. A scuffle?
— BEN. No.
— GIOV. Come tell me.
— BEN. What?
— GIOV. You fought —
— BEN. Why, yes, I fought. What of't?
— GIOV. With whom, I say?
— BEN. With Piero Torregiani.
— GIOV. Him? What for?
— BEN. For nothing.
— GIOV. Come —
— BEN. Why —
— GIOV. Come, you quarrelled: why?
— BEN. He scoffed —
— GIOV. At you.
— BEN. No, not at me.
— GIOV. Not you?
Who then?
— BEN. He jeered at Michael Angelo.
— GIOV. God help us! fight for Michael Angelo!
He's mad.
— BEN. Give me my soup.
— GIOV. How happened it?
A son who in the lanes of Florence walks
With boiling fist for Angelo, who, gorged
With Papal florins, grandly lives in Rome!
What was't that Piero said? What was't?
— BEN. He said —
No, no, enough, I'm sick of't. Let me be.
I'm mad, you say, Sir: let me grind alone
And turn my knuckles in the granite. Yes,
He scoffed at Michael Angelo, and I
Nailed him a crash between his yellow eyes.
— GIOV. But why? why, Benvenuto?
— COSA . Brother, here's
Your pot of soup; and now the water's warm
I'll sponge your bloody forehead. Sit you down —
Come quietly, now come and tell us.
— BEN. Well,
We walked, Piero and I — I hate the man
And smell him like a pestilence — I walked
Down Via Larga, where from the Palace I
With certain drawings came. — No, I've enough.
— COSA . And then —
— BEN. And there the splendid man,
Tall, beautiful, and under shaggy brows
A flash he clips with blinking — you'd have said
A soldier, not a sculptor, but he carves
For them in England, and is now returned
To catch some poor Italian prentices
For export — me he baited, for a time,
But he 'll return without, if he return.
— GIOV. He's dead?
— BEN. I wish so — only a little more —
— COSA . On Via Larga — come —
— BEN. He met me, and
" That scroll there, " asked the glory of his voice,
" Are drawings? " " So, " said I; and he, " What of? "
I pulled him to the Duomo steps. — You know
'T was given out a fresco be designed
For the Palazzo Vecchio, picturing
How Pisa was besieged by Florentines.
And master Leonardo worked to purpose:
Before the walls and puffing sky of cloud
A skirmish thrills the plain — hot work and high;
The horses rear, the riders shining up
To lunge with sword or battleaxe; one down,
Another falling, all constrained and each
Alive, — with certain seizure and defence
Of gonfalons afloat on tufted plumes
As ravishes the sight.
— GIOV. I saw the thing,
I was a draughtsman once. It is an art —
— COSA . Was there another?
— BEN. Michael Angelo's.
A human hand can cast no further.
It is a summer's day, and Arno lies
Languid throughout the picture. In it bathe
A pack of footsoldiers which on the instant
Hear an alarm: the swimming strain for shore,
Some with uneasy arms are wading, others fall
Or splashing catch pieces of jutting turf,
While clear upon the bank the nimble ones
Run swift and naked to repairs of armour
And weapons stacked in file over the plain.
Such grouped and quick variety! So full,
Muscular and harmonious! Such relief
Of flesh and surface! It enlarged my eyes
With wonder and my brain with ecstasy. —
Bread, Cosa, and another flask of wine.
— GIOV. Was this your brawl with Piero?
— BEN. Good father,
I'd copied this design of Buonarroti's,
And to Piero unrolled my drawing. He
With puckered nose said, looking: " Michael was
" My schoolmate: we together learned to draw
" Of Fra Filippo in the Carmine.
" He has a nose remembers me! He used
" To hawk and whistle at our scrawls, to say:
" " Your hero'd best keep seated or his thighs
" " Would, one jostle his heart, the other pull
" " His hip-bone to the knee;" or " Cupid there
" " High up weighs fifty tons: if he should fall
" " O woe unto the dwellers of the plain!"
" " One day I stomached him no more. He peered
" Over me at my board: " That spider-web" —
" I'd drawn a woman running. At the word,
" Sprung up I shot my knuckles at his nose.
" Consult it for my aim. " He snickered, but
Inside my brain it swam like fumes of hell.
I leaned into his face and shouted: " Cur,
" You broke it? " " Little boy, " he said. We fought.
'T was ugly doing. I caught him full, tho', when
He fumbled for his knife; but from the crowd
That screamed and thickened round us, certain friends
O'erpowering shouldered him delirious home.
He fought me well.
— COSA . You're wounded, brother?
— BEN. No.
The scurvy fool! the braggart! I'd as lief
See adders rear out of my folded arms
As that man's face again.
— GIOV. This for my son!
— BEN. But I was hungry! There, I've eat enough!
Cosa, give me my board and pencils. 'T should be late
And father's bed-time.
[ COSA gets him his drawing tools . BENVENUTO then works at the table while GIOVANNI goes on whittling and humming .]
— GIOV. At the jeweller
Marchoni's, any work in prospect?
— BEN. Much.
And of myself a buckle in good gold
Is ordered. I've a posture in my eyes
Of Sirens interlaced with golden scales
Roughing a silver ground. Leave me alone.
This candle gutters.
— GIOV. Son, do you remember
The ending of the song — for I forget:
In Campo Santo is a grave
I and the moon together —
I hear the rest, but like an echo, gone —
Or going from the gateways of my voice.
— BEN. [ sings ].
In Campo Santo is a grave
Where I and the moon together
Go linger oft and cannot leave
— — Tho' dawn be in the weather .
Oh, let me hold her in my arms .
Cold tho' she be, there let her languish .
Only her kiss of death can warm
— — The snow-fields of my anguish .

— GIOV. [ aside ].
That voice and singing!
— BEN. How supple is the strength
That coils the rondure of a Siren's tail!
It lies within the fine imagination
Of them of old to shape their legend so
That monsters have position in the realm
Of strict anatomy and reasoned things. —
The frame is square.
— GIOV. [ looks at him for a while in silence and then says: ] O my beloved son!
I was a hand at draughting, I have worked
At stone and trowel all these many years —
Hard work, to give my little children bread.
Then, in repayment of my weariness,
To freshen the fatigue, that day by day
Added at last now makes me an old man —
For see, my tenor quavers and my hand
Can't steer the knife to purpose on this wood —
The master-mason said to-day my work
Was bad and he'd employ my age no more —
I laboured most for you: then promise me
You'll not forget and still practise sometimes
The flute I played at evening for repose
And taught you with my love in weariness.
I loved you, taught you, gave you all myself.
Music and singing were my joy, and you
Were to be my musician; but you turned
To another art — rightly, I say not no,
But yet remember music — let me hear
The crying of thy mellow flute once more,
Or sing to me as always thou hast sung
Since when I showed thee how upon my knee.
— COSA [ to BENVENUTO ].
Love, humour him.
— BEN. I will not.
— GIOV. Benvenuto,
It is not much to give thy father back
A fluteful of his breath, to tender him
Across the early morning of thy voice
A song's worth of delicious gaiety.
You know not — you cannot know —
You know not what it is to hear aloud
Within the walls of age and poverty
Your singing child, alive, alert, and full
Of small perfections in the art you love.
We artisans are jealous, and to give
The secret of our art is to give all.
I gave you all my music — play to me
As only you can play — a little now,
For you and music are my evening-stars.
— COSA . Brother!
— BEN. Take off your arms.
— GIOV. Then let it be.
— COSA . He's crying.
— BEN. Let him.
— COSA . Madonna, pardon him!
— GIOV. Well then, to bed. Good-night.
— BEN. [ to COSA ]. Give me my flute,
Give me the cursed thing; you know the words.
— COSA [ aside ].
He might have asked some other song of me!

When first my eyes there, in the shadow of the meadow, saw my God,
Like the lightning, thin and narrow, ran the arrow thro' my blood.
Tho' I struggled, yet I could not, yet I would not look away,
Asked his mercy to accept me or reject me, as he say.
I gave him nothing, tho' what could I of my duty give him more?
Gave him little tho' I suffered all I offered at his door;
I gave him nothing freely, fully, for 't was all I was or had,
Gave him every thought and breath and life and death and wine and bread.

O Virgin Mary, in the awaking of the breaking Day of pain,
If he's tired, let him rest and me be questioned for us twain.
O let me save him, earn his blessing, me redress him in the sod.
Love can smother hell and hover with her lover up to God.

— BEN. There!
— GIOV. O bless you, dear musician! That's my son.
What sound — you noticed, Cosa — tempered with
Sweet doubts and sweeter hurries. As I fall
From aged weariness away to sleep,
Your smooth and sad cadenzas, Benvenuto,
Will star my dreams.
— BEN. Good-night, Sir; Cosa, good-night.
[ Exeunt GIOVANNI and COSA .
This fluid music clouds me with a slag.
I cannot see. My fluttering head and hand
No more are with the metals, and the lines
Go one into the other like threads of wool.
Among the many arts the lowest much
Is music: which with pitiable means
Is scraped and blown and twanged and — no one knows
How or what for. O curse on't. To work.
I can't — must — will.
— GIOV. [ looks in at the door in his nightgown ].
That song, another time,
Not quite so fast, and your beginning notes
Less sudden and attacked with subtler breath.
[ Exit GIOVANNI .]

— BEN . If e'er I play again!
He pushes me
So every evening to the rack. Great God,
The very rhythm of my design is snapped
At the root short-off, just at the noble moment
When dream and comprehension fuse in one.
I'll wreck my greatness here, only to please
My father's whim. It stings patience. I — yes —
And here over my ruined vision, I
Writhe like a scorpion in a ring of fire.
Florence is not for me. I will abroad
And slake my rankling thirst for the great world,
For liberty, myself and what I am:
Enough! At dawn to-morrow off for Rome.