quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d' ye say? In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark. What if at last we get our man of parts, We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese And Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine 140 And put the front on it that ought to be!" And hereupon he bade me daub away. Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank, Never was such prompt disemburdening. First, every sort of monk, the black and white, I drew them, fat and lean : then, folk at church, From good old gossips waiting to confess Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends— To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot, Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there 150 With the little children round him in a row Of admiration, half for his beard and half For that white anger of his victim's son Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm, Signing himself with the other because of Christ (Whose sad face on the cross sees only this After the passion of a thousand years) Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head, (Which the intense eyes looked through) came at eve On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf, 160 Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers (The brute took growling), prayed, and so was gone, I painted all, then cried "'T is ask and have; Choose, for more's ready!"—laid the ladder flat, And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall. The monks closed in a circle and praised loud Till checked, taught what to see and not to see, Being simple bodies—"That's the very man! Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog! That woman's like the Prior's niece who comes 170 To care about his asthma: it's the life!" But there my triumph's straw-fire flared and funked; Their betters took their turn to see and say: The Prior and the learned pulled a face And stopped all that in no time. "How? what's here? Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all! Faces, arms, legs and bodies like the true As much as pea and pea! it's devil's-game! Your business is not to catch men with show, With homage to the perishable clay, 180 But lift them over it, ignore it all, Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh. Your business is to paint the souls of men— Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke . . . no, it's not . . . It's vapor done up like a new-born babe— (In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth) It's . . . well, what matters talking, it's the soul! Give us no more of body than shows soul! Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God,
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