Quote #4 – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

ludwieg mies van der rohe (1886-1969)

was born in Aachen, Germany, on march 27, 1886. 

after having trained with his father, a master stonemason. 

at 19 he moved to bBerlin where he worked for Bruno Paul,

the art nouveau architect and furniture designer. 

at 20 he received his first independent commission, 

to plan a house for a philosopher (alois riehl). 

in 1908 he began working for the architect 

peter behrens. he studied the architecture of the 

prussian karl friedrich schinkel and frank lloyd wright.

he opened his own office in berlin in 1912,

and married in 1913.

---

after world war I, he began studying the skyscraper 

and designed two innovative steel-framed towers 

encased in glass. one of them was the friedrichstrasse 

skyscraper, designed in 1921 for a competition. 

it was never built, although it drew critical praise and 

foreshadowed his skyscraper designs of the late 40s and 50s.

---

in 1921, when his marriage ended, he changed 

his name, adding the dutch 'van der' and his mother’s 

maiden name, 'rohe': lLudwigmies became ludwig mies 

van der rohe.

---

in the 20’s he was active in a number of the berlin 

avant-garde circles ( the magazine 'G' and organizations such 

as the 'novembergruppe', 'zehner ring', and 'arbeitsrat für kunst')

that supported modern art and architecture along with artists 

like hans richter, el lissitzky, and theo van doesburg, 

among others. major contributions to the architectural 

philosophies of the late 1920s and 1930s he made as 

artistic director of the werkbund-sponsored weissenhof 

project, a model housing colony in stuttgart. 

the modern apartments and houses were designed by 

leading european architects, including a block by mies.

---

in 1927 he designed one of his most famous buildings, 

/ the german pavilion at the international exposition in barcelona 

in 1929. this small hall, known as the barcelona

pavilion (for which he also designed the famous chrome 

and leather 'barcelona chair'), had a flat roof supported by 

columns. the pavilion’s internal walls, made of glass and marble, 

could be moved around as they did not support the structure. 

the concept of fluid space with a seamless flow between 

indoors and outdoors was further explored in other projects 

he designed for decades to come.

mies began working with lilly reich, who remained his 

collaborator and companion for more than ten years. 

---

in 1930, mies met new york architect philip johnson, 

who included several of his projects in

MoMA’s first architecture exhibition held in 1932, 'modern

architecture: international exhibition', thanks to which 

mies’s work began to be known in the united states.

---

in the30s, none of his designs were built due to the 

sweeping economic and political changes overtaking 

germany. he was director of the bauhaus school from 

1930 until its disbandment in 1933, shut down under 

pressure from the new nazi government. 

he moved to the united states in 1937. 

from 1938 to 1958 he was head of the architecture 

department at the armour institute of technology in 

chicago, later renamed the illinois institute of technology. 

in the 40s, was asked to design a new campus for the 

school, a project in which he continued to refine his 

steel-and-glass style. he had also formed a new relationship 

with chicago artist lora marx that would last for the rest of his 

life.

---

by 1944, he had become an american citizen and was 

well established professionally. 

in this period he designed one of his most famous 

buildings, a small weekend retreat outside chicago,

a transparent box framed by eight exterior steel 

columns. / the ‘farnsworth house’ is one of the most 

radically minimalist houses ever designed. 

its interior, a single room, is subdivided by partitions 

and completely enclosed in glass.

---

in the 50s he continued to develop this concept of open, 

flexible space on a much larger scale:

in 1953, he developed the convention hall, innovative was 

the structural system that spanned large distances.

during this period he also realized his dream of building a 

glass skyscraper.

/ the ' twin towers' in chicago were completed in 1951, followed

by other high-rises in chicago, new york, detroit, toronto...

culminating in 1954 with / the 'seagram' building in new york, 

hailed as a masterpiece of skyscraper design. 

---

for his career he achieved in 1959 the 

'orden pour le merite' (germany) and in 1963 the 

'presidential medal of freedom' (USA).

---

in 1962, his career came full-circle when he was invited to 

design the 'new national gallery' in berlin. 

his design for this building achieved his long-held vision of 

an exposed steel structure that directly connected interior 

space to the landscape. 

he returned to berlin several times while the gallery was under 

construction, but was unable to attend the opening in 1968.

he died in chicago on august 17, 1969.

“Andrea del Sarto”

Robert Browning

But do not let us quarrel any more, 

No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: 

Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. 

You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? 

I’ll work then for your friend’s friend, never fear, 

Treat his own subject after his own way, 

Fix his own time, accept too his own price, 

And shut the money into this small hand

When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly? 

Oh, I’ll content him,—but to-morrow, Love! 

I often am much wearier than you think, 

This evening more than usual, and it seems 

As if—forgive now—should you let me sit 

Here by the window with your hand in mine 

And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole, 

Both of one mind, as married people use, 

Quietly, quietly the evening through, 

I might get up to-morrow to my work 

Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try. 

To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this! 

Your soft hand is a woman of itself, 

And mine the man’s bared breast she curls inside. 

Don’t count the time lost, neither; you must serve 

For each of the five pictures we require: 

It saves a model. So! keep looking so— 

My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds! 

—How could you ever prick those perfect ears, 

Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet— 

My face, my moon, my everybody’s moon, 

Which everybody looks on and calls his, 

And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn, 

While she looks—no one’s: very dear, no less. 

You smile? why, there’s my picture ready made, 

There’s what we painters call our harmony! 

A common greyness silvers everything,—

All in a twilight, you and I alike 

—You, at the point of your first pride in me 

(That’s gone you know),—but I, at every point; 

My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down 

To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. 

There’s the bell clinking from the chapel-top; 

That length of convent-wall across the way 

Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; 

The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease, 

And autumn grows, autumn in everything. 

Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape 

As if I saw alike my work and self 

And all that I was born to be and do, 

A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God’s hand. 

How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; 

So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! 

I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie! 

This chamber for example—turn your head— 

All that’s behind us! You don’t understand 

Nor care to understand about my art, 

But you can hear at least when people speak: 

And that cartoon, the second from the door 

—It is the thing, Love! so such things should be— 

Behold Madonna!—I am bold to say. 

I can do with my pencil what I know, 

What I see, what at bottom of my heart 

I wish for, if I ever wish so deep— 

Do easily, too—when I say, perfectly, 

I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge, 

Who listened to the Legate’s talk last week, 

And just as much they used to say in France. 

At any rate ’tis easy, all of it! 

No sketches first, no studies, that’s long past: 

I do what many dream of, all their lives, 

—Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, 

And fail in doing. I could count twenty such 

On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, 

Who strive—you don’t know how the others strive 

To paint a little thing like that you smeared 

Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,— 

Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, 

(I know his name, no matter)—so much less! 

Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged. 

There burns a truer light of God in them, 

In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, 

Heart, or whate’er else, than goes on to prompt 

This low-pulsed forthright craftsman’s hand of mine. 

Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, 

Reach many a time a heaven that’s shut to me, 

Enter and take their place there sure enough, 

Though they come back and cannot tell the world. 

My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here. 

The sudden blood of these men! at a word— 

Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too. 

I, painting from myself and to myself, 

Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blame 

Or their praise either. Somebody remarks 

Morello’s outline there is wrongly traced, 

His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, 

Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? 

Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? 

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, 

Or what’s a heaven for? All is silver-grey, 

Placid and perfect with my art: the worse! 

I know both what I want and what might gain, 

And yet how profitless to know, to sigh 

“Had I been two, another and myself, 

“Our head would have o’erlooked the world!” No doubt. 

Yonder’s a work now, of that famous youth 

The Urbinate who died five years ago. 

(’Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.) 

Well, I can fancy how he did it all, 

Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, 

Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, 

Above and through his art—for it gives way; 

That arm is wrongly put—and there again— 

A fault to pardon in the drawing’s lines, 

Its body, so to speak: its soul is right, 

He means right—that, a child may understand. 

Still, what an arm! and I could alter it: 

But all the play, the insight and the stretch— 

(Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out? 

Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, 

We might have risen to Rafael, I and you! 

Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think— 

More than I merit, yes, by many times. 

But had you—oh, with the same perfect brow, 

And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, 

And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird 

The fowler’s pipe, and follows to the snare — 

Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind! 

Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged 

“God and the glory! never care for gain. 

“The present by the future, what is that? 

“Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo! 

“Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!” 

I might have done it for you. So it seems: 

Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules. 

Beside, incentives come from the soul’s self; 

The rest avail not. Why do I need you? 

What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo? 

In this world, who can do a thing, will not; 

And who would do it, cannot, I perceive: 

Yet the will’s somewhat—somewhat, too, the power— 

And thus we half-men struggle. At the end, 

God, I conclude, compensates, punishes. 

’Tis safer for me, if the award be strict, 

That I am something underrated here, 

Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth. 

I dared not, do you know, leave home all day, 

For fear of chancing on the Paris lords. 

The best is when they pass and look aside; 

But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all. 

Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time, 

And that long festal year at Fontainebleau! 

I surely then could sometimes leave the ground, 

Put on the glory, Rafael’s daily wear, 

In that humane great monarch’s golden look,— 

One finger in his beard or twisted curl 

Over his mouth’s good mark that made the smile, 

One arm about my shoulder, round my neck, 

The jingle of his gold chain in my ear, 

I painting proudly with his breath on me, 

All his court round him, seeing with his eyes, 

Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls 

Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts,— 

And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond, 

This in the background, waiting on my work, 

To crown the issue with a last reward! 

A good time, was it not, my kingly days? 

And had you not grown restless... but I know— 

’Tis done and past: ’twas right, my instinct said: 

Too live the life grew, golden and not grey, 

And I’m the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt 

Out of the grange whose four walls make his world. 

How could it end in any other way? 

You called me, and I came home to your heart. 

The triumph was—to reach and stay there; since 

I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost? 

Let my hands frame your face in your hair’s gold, 

You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine! 

“Rafael did this, Andrea painted that; 

“The Roman’s is the better when you pray, 

“But still the other’s Virgin was his wife—” 

Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge 

Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows 

My better fortune, I resolve to think. 

For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives, 

Said one day Agnolo, his very self, 

To Rafael . . . I have known it all these years . . . 

(When the young man was flaming out his thoughts 

Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see, 

Too lifted up in heart because of it) 

“Friend, there’s a certain sorry little scrub 

“Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, 

“Who, were he set to plan and execute 

“As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings, 

“Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!” 

To Rafael’s!—And indeed the arm is wrong. 

I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see, 

Give the chalk here—quick, thus, the line should go! 

Ay, but the soul! he’s Rafael! rub it out! 

Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth, 

(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo? 

Do you forget already words like those?) 

If really there was such a chance, so lost,— 

Is, whether you’re—not grateful—but more pleased. 

Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed! 

This hour has been an hour! Another smile? 

If you would sit thus by me every night 

I should work better, do you comprehend? 

I mean that I should earn more, give you more. 

See, it is settled dusk now; there’s a star; 

Morello’s gone, the watch-lights show the wall, 

The cue-owls speak the name we call them by. 

Come from the window, love,—come in, at last, 

Inside the melancholy little house 

We built to be so gay with. God is just. 

King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights 

When I look up from painting, eyes tired out, 

The walls become illumined, brick from brick 

Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold, 

That gold of his I did cement them with! 

Let us but love each other. Must you go? 

That Cousin here again? he waits outside? 

Must see you—you, and not with me? Those loans? 

More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that? 

Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend? 

While hand and eye and something of a heart 

Are left me, work’s my ware, and what’s it worth? 

I’ll pay my fancy. Only let me sit 

The grey remainder of the evening out, 

Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly 

How I could paint, were I but back in France, 

One picture, just one more—the Virgin’s face, 

Not yours this time! I want you at my side 

To hear them—that is, Michel Agnolo— 

Judge all I do and tell you of its worth. 

Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend. 

I take the subjects for his corridor, 

Finish the portrait out of hand—there, there, 

And throw him in another thing or two 

If he demurs; the whole should prove enough 

To pay for this same Cousin’s freak. Beside, 

What’s better and what’s all I care about, 

Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff! 

Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he, 

The Cousin! what does he to please you more?

I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. 

I regret little, I would change still less. 

Since there my past life lies, why alter it? 

The very wrong to Francis!—it is true 

I took his coin, was tempted and complied, 

And built this house and sinned, and all is said. 

My father and my mother died of want. 

Well, had I riches of my own? you see 

How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot. 

They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died: 

And I have laboured somewhat in my time 

And not been paid profusely. Some good son 

Paint my two hundred pictures—let him try! 

No doubt, there’s something strikes a balance. Yes, 

You loved me quite enough. it seems to-night. 

This must suffice me here. What would one have? 

In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance— 

Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, 

Meted on each side by the angel’s reed, 

For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me 

To cover

Complete Text

But do not let us quarrel any more, 

No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: 

Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. 

You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? 

I’ll work then for your friend’s friend, never fear, 

Treat his own subject after his own way, 

Fix his own time, accept too his own price, 

And shut the money into this small hand

When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly? 

Oh, I’ll content him,—but to-morrow, Love! 

I often am much wearier than you think, 

This evening more than usual, and it seems 

As if—forgive now—should you let me sit 

Here by the window with your hand in mine 

And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole, 

Both of one mind, as married people use, 

Quietly, quietly the evening through, 

I might get up to-morrow to my work 

Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try. 

To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this! 

Your soft hand is a woman of itself, 

And mine the man’s bared breast she curls inside. 

Don’t count the time lost, neither; you must serve 

For each of the five pictures we require: 

It saves a model. So! keep looking so— 

My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds! 

—How could you ever prick those perfect ears, 

Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet— 

My face, my moon, my everybody’s moon, 

Which everybody looks on and calls his, 

And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn, 

While she looks—no one’s: very dear, no less. 

You smile? why, there’s my picture ready made, 

There’s what we painters call our harmony! 

A common greyness silvers everything,—

All in a twilight, you and I alike 

—You, at the point of your first pride in me 

(That’s gone you know),—but I, at every point; 

My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down 

To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. 

There’s the bell clinking from the chapel-top; 

That length of convent-wall across the way 

Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; 

The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease, 

And autumn grows, autumn in everything. 

Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape 

As if I saw alike my work and self 

And all that I was born to be and do, 

A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God’s hand. 

How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; 

So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! 

I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie! 

This chamber for example—turn your head— 

All that’s behind us! You don’t understand 

Nor care to understand about my art, 

But you can hear at least when people speak: 

And that cartoon, the second from the door 

—It is the thing, Love! so such things should be— 

Behold Madonna!—I am bold to say. 

I can do with my pencil what I know, 

What I see, what at bottom of my heart 

I wish for, if I ever wish so deep— 

Do easily, too—when I say, perfectly, 

I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge, 

Who listened to the Legate’s talk last week, 

And just as much they used to say in France. 

At any rate ’tis easy, all of it! 

No sketches first, no studies, that’s long past: 

I do what many dream of, all their lives, 

—Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, 

And fail in doing. I could count twenty such 

On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, 

Who strive—you don’t know how the others strive 

To paint a little thing like that you smeared 

Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,— 

Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, 

(I know his name, no matter)—so much less! 

Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged. 

There burns a truer light of God in them, 

In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, 

Heart, or whate’er else, than goes on to prompt 

This low-pulsed forthright craftsman’s hand of mine. 

Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, 

Reach many a time a heaven that’s shut to me, 

Enter and take their place there sure enough, 

Though they come back and cannot tell the world. 

My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here. 

The sudden blood of these men! at a word— 

Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too. 

I, painting from myself and to myself, 

Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blame 

Or their praise either. Somebody remarks 

Morello’s outline there is wrongly traced, 

His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, 

Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? 

Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? 

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, 

Or what’s a heaven for? All is silver-grey, 

Placid and perfect with my art: the worse! 

I know both what I want and what might gain, 

And yet how profitless to know, to sigh 

“Had I been two, another and myself, 

“Our head would have o’erlooked the world!” No doubt. 

Yonder’s a work now, of that famous youth 

The Urbinate who died five years ago. 

(’Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.) 

Well, I can fancy how he did it all, 

Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, 

Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, 

Above and through his art—for it gives way; 

That arm is wrongly put—and there again— 

A fault to pardon in the drawing’s lines, 

Its body, so to speak: its soul is right, 

He means right—that, a child may understand. 

Still, what an arm! and I could alter it: 

But all the play, the insight and the stretch— 

(Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out? 

Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, 

We might have risen to Rafael, I and you! 

Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think— 

More than I merit, yes, by many times. 

But had you—oh, with the same perfect brow, 

And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, 

And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird 

The fowler’s pipe, and follows to the snare — 

Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind! 

Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged 

“God and the glory! never care for gain. 

“The present by the future, what is that? 

“Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo! 

“Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!” 

I might have done it for you. So it seems: 

Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules. 

Beside, incentives come from the soul’s self; 

The rest avail not. Why do I need you? 

What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo? 

In this world, who can do a thing, will not; 

And who would do it, cannot, I perceive: 

Yet the will’s somewhat—somewhat, too, the power— 

And thus we half-men struggle. At the end, 

God, I conclude, compensates, punishes. 

’Tis safer for me, if the award be strict, 

That I am something underrated here, 

Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth. 

I dared not, do you know, leave home all day, 

For fear of chancing on the Paris lords. 

The best is when they pass and look aside; 

But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all. 

Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time, 

And that long festal year at Fontainebleau! 

I surely then could sometimes leave the ground, 

Put on the glory, Rafael’s daily wear, 

In that humane great monarch’s golden look,— 

One finger in his beard or twisted curl 

Over his mouth’s good mark that made the smile, 

One arm about my shoulder, round my neck, 

The jingle of his gold chain in my ear, 

I painting proudly with his breath on me, 

All his court round him, seeing with his eyes, 

Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls 

Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts,— 

And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond, 

This in the background, waiting on my work, 

To crown the issue with a last reward! 

A good time, was it not, my kingly days? 

And had you not grown restless... but I know— 

’Tis done and past: ’twas right, my instinct said: 

Too live the life grew, golden and not grey, 

And I’m the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt 

Out of the grange whose four walls make his world. 

How could it end in any other way? 

You called me, and I came home to your heart. 

The triumph was—to reach and stay there; since 

I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost? 

Let my hands frame your face in your hair’s gold, 

You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine! 

“Rafael did this, Andrea painted that; 

“The Roman’s is the better when you pray, 

“But still the other’s Virgin was his wife—” 

Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge 

Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows 

My better fortune, I resolve to think. 

For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives, 

Said one day Agnolo, his very self, 

To Rafael . . . I have known it all these years . . . 

(When the young man was flaming out his thoughts 

Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see, 

Too lifted up in heart because of it) 

“Friend, there’s a certain sorry little scrub 

“Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, 

“Who, were he set to plan and execute 

“As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings, 

“Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!” 

To Rafael’s!—And indeed the arm is wrong. 

I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see, 

Give the chalk here—quick, thus, the line should go! 

Ay, but the soul! he’s Rafael! rub it out! 

Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth, 

(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo? 

Do you forget already words like those?) 

If really there was such a chance, so lost,— 

Is, whether you’re—not grateful—but more pleased. 

Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed! 

This hour has been an hour! Another smile? 

If you would sit thus by me every night 

I should work better, do you comprehend? 

I mean that I should earn more, give you more. 

See, it is settled dusk now; there’s a star; 

Morello’s gone, the watch-lights show the wall, 

The cue-owls speak the name we call them by. 

Come from the window, love,—come in, at last, 

Inside the melancholy little house 

We built to be so gay with. God is just. 

King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights 

When I look up from painting, eyes tired out, 

The walls become illumined, brick from brick 

Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold, 

That gold of his I did cement them with! 

Let us but love each other. Must you go? 

That Cousin here again? he waits outside? 

Must see you—you, and not with me? Those loans? 

More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that? 

Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend? 

While hand and eye and something of a heart 

Are left me, work’s my ware, and what’s it worth? 

I’ll pay my fancy. Only let me sit 

The grey remainder of the evening out, 

Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly 

How I could paint, were I but back in France, 

One picture, just one more—the Virgin’s face, 

Not yours this time! I want you at my side 

To hear them—that is, Michel Agnolo— 

Judge all I do and tell you of its worth. 

Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend. 

I take the subjects for his corridor, 

Finish the portrait out of hand—there, there, 

And throw him in another thing or two 

If he demurs; the whole should prove enough 

To pay for this same Cousin’s freak. Beside, 

What’s better and what’s all I care about, 

Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff! 

Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he, 

The Cousin! what does he to please you more?

I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. 

I regret little, I would change still less. 

Since there my past life lies, why alter it? 

The very wrong to Francis!—it is true 

I took his coin, was tempted and complied, 

And built this house and sinned, and all is said. 

My father and my mother died of want. 

Well, had I riches of my own? you see 

How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot. 

They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died: 

And I have laboured somewhat in my time 

And not been paid profusely. Some good son 

Paint my two hundred pictures—let him try! 

No doubt, there’s something strikes a balance. Yes, 

You loved me quite enough. it seems to-night. 

This must suffice me here. What would one have? 

In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance— 

Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, 

Meted on each side by the angel’s reed, 

For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me 

To cover—the three first without a wife, 

While I have mine! So—still they overcome 

Because there’s still Lucrezia,—as I choose.

Again the Cousin’s whistle! Go, my Love. 

—the three first without a wife, 

While I have mine! So—still they overcome 

Because there’s still Lucrezia,—as I choose.

Again the Cousin’s whistle! Go, my Love.