XI.

School parted us; we never found again
That childish world where our two spirits mingled
Like scents from varying roses that remain
One sweetness, nor can evermore be singled.

Yet the twin habit of that early time
Lingered for long about the heart and tongue :
We had been natives of one happy clime,
And its dear accents to our utterance clung.

Till the dire years whose awful name is Change Had grasped our souls still yearning in divorce, And pitiless shaped them in two forms that range Two elements which sever their life's course.

But were another childhood-world my share,
I would be born a little sister there.

STRADIVARIUS.

YOUR soul was lifted by the wings to-day

Hearing the master of the violin:

You praised him, praised the great Sebastian too Who made that fine Chaconne; but did you think Of old Antonio Stradivari ? — him

Who a good century and half ago

Put his true work in that brown instrument
And by the nice adjustment of its frame
Gave it responsive life, continuous

With the master's finger-tips and perfected
Like them by delicate rectitude of use.
Not Bach alone, helped by fine precedent
Of genius gone before, nor Joachim
Who holds the strain afresh incorporate
By inward hearing and notation strict
Of nerve and muscle, made our joy to-day:
Another soul was living in the air
And swaying it to true deliverance

Of high invention and responsive skill:-
That plain white-aproned man who stood at work
Patient and accurate full fourscore years,
Cherished his sight and touch by temperance,
And since keen sense is love of perfectness
Made perfect violins, the needed paths
For inspiration and high mastery.

No simpler man than he: he never cried,
"Why was I born to this monotonous task
Of making violins?" or flung them down
To suit with hurling act a well-hurled curse
At labor on such perishable stuff.

Hence neighbors in Cremona held him dull,
Called him a slave, a mill-horse, a machine,
Begged him to tell his motives or to lend
A few gold pieces to a loftier mind.
Yet he had pithy words full fed by fact;
For Fact, well-trusted, reasons and persuades,
Is gnomic, cutting, or ironical,

Draws tears, or is a tocsin to arouse

Can hold all figures of the orator

In one plain sentence; has her pauses too

Eloquent silence at the chasm abrupt

Where knowledge ceases.

Thus Antonio

Made answers as Fact willed, and made them strong.

Naldo, a painter of eclectic school,

Taking his dicers, candlelight and grins
From Caravaggio, and in holier groups
Combining Flemish flesh with martyrdom -
Knowing all tricks of style at thirty-one,
And weary of them, while Antonio
At sixty-nine wrought placidly his best
Making the violin you heard to-day-
Naldo would tease him oft to tell his aims.
"Perhaps thou hast some pleasant vice to feed -
The love of louis d'ors in heaps of four,
Each violin a heap I've nought to blame;
My vices waste such heaps. But then, why work
With painful nicety? Since fame once earned
By luck or merit - oftenest by luck-
(Else why do I put Bonifazio's name

To work that pinxit Naldo' would not sell ?)
Is welcome index to the wealthy mob

Where they should pay their gold, and where they pay

There they find merit - take your tow for flax,

And hold the flax unlabelled with your name,

Too coarse for sufferance."

"I like the gold well, yes

Antonio then:

but not for meals.

And as my stomach, so my eye and hand,

And inward sense that works alone with both,
Have hunger that can never feed on coin.
Who draws a line and satisfies his soul,

Making it crooked where it should be straight?
An idiot with an oyster-shell may draw

His lines along the sand, all wavering,
Fixing no point or pathway to a point;
An idiot one remove may choose his line,
Straggle and be content; but God be praised,
Antonio Stradivari has an eye

That winces at false work and loves the true,
With hand and arm that play upon the tool
As willingly as any singing bird

Sets him to sing his morning roundelay,
Because he likes to sing and likes the song."

Then Naldo: ""T is a petty kind of fame
At best, that comes of making violins;
And saves no masses, either:
To purgatory none the less."

Thou wilt go

But he :

"'T were purgatory here to make them ill; And for my fame

when any master holds

"Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine,

He will be glad that Stradivari lived,

Made violins, and made them of the best.

The masters only know whose work is good:

They will choose mine, and while God gives them skili

I give them instruments to play upon,

God choosing me to help Him."

"What! were God

At fault for violins, thou absent?"

"Yes;

He were at fault for Stradivari's work."

"Why, many hold Giuseppe's violins
As good as thine."

"May be they are different.
His quality declines: he spoils his hand.
With over-drinking. But were his the best,
He could not work for two. My work is mine,
And, heresy or not, if my hand slacked

I should rob God - since He is fullest good-
Leaving a blank instead of violins.

I say, not God Himself can make man's best
Without best men to help Him. I am one best
Here in Cremona, using sunlight well
To fashion finest maple till it serves
More cunningly than throats for harmony.

"T is rare delight: I would not change my skill
To be the Emperor with bungling hands,

And lose my work, which comes as natural
As self at waking."

"Thou art little more

Than a deft potter's wheel, Antonio;
Turning out work by mere necessity
And lack of varied function. Higher arts

Subsist on freedom

eccentricity

Uncounted inspirations- influence

That comes with drinking, gambling, talk turned wild, Then moody misery and lack of food

With every dithyrambic fine excess:

These make at last a storm which flashes out

In lightning revelations. Steady work
Turns genius to a loom; the soul must lie

Like grapes beneath the sun till ripeness comes
And mellow vintage. I could paint you now
The finest Crucifixion; yesternight
Returning home I saw it on a sky

Blue-black, thick-starred. I want two louis d'ors
To buy the canvas and the costly blues

Trust me a fortnight."

"Where are those last two

I lent thee for thy Judith? her thou saw'st
In saffron gown, with Holofernes' head

And beauty all complete ?"

"She is but sketched:

I lack the proper model- and the mood.
A great idea is an eagle's egg,

Craves time for hatching; while the eagle sits
Feed her."

"If thou wilt call thy pictures eggs
I call the hatching, Work. "T is God gives skill,
But not without men's hands: He could not make
Antonio Stradivari's violins

Without Antonio. Get thee to thy easel."