Michelangelo and His Poetry

Michelangelo Buonarroti. Born March 6, 1474; died February 18, 1564. To the triple crown of Sculptor, Painter, and Architect, to which Michelangelo's claim is undisputed, must be added that of Poet, which has been accorded to him by the finest critics of his own time and of ours ; yet to many readers of scholarship and taste his poems are still almost unknown. This neglect is partly due to the intrinsic difficulty in the poems themselves, which usually treat of lofty themes in condensed language, and partly to the fact that not until twenty-one years ago, were his works properly edited and published in Italy. These poems contain such wealth of thought and feeling, touching upon the deepest questions of philosophy and the tenderest experiences of the human heart, that he who once tastes of their sweetness will never cease to thirst for this fountain of refreshment and strength. The epitaphs on
Cecchino Bracci Fiorentino, for instance, may, on the first reading, seem quaint and formal, reiterating trite thoughts of death and immortality ; but a fuller acquaintance with them recognizes the expression of every form and though of grief, and they lie in the memory as a treasure-house
of sympathetic utterance which matches the changing phases of one's own experience.

Michelangelo Poems

Selected Poem 1

When art divine some noble attitude And perfect form conceives of beauty rare, The earhest offspring which that thought doth bear Is made of humble clay, a model rude. But what the chisel promised shall be yet Brought forth a second time in living stone, And is re-born so beautiful that none To its eternity may limits set. So I, a model of myself, was born, A model of myself, to be by thee In after time more perfect born again. If thou my superfluity hast shorn, My wants fulfilled : for this thy ministry What penitence shall not my love attain !

Selected Poem 2

The greatest sculptor can no thought conceive That doth not lie deep buried in the stone : And this the hand discovereth alone, Which doth commandment from the mind receive. The ill I flee, the good I seek to gain. In thee, sweet lady, noble and divine. Are hidden thus ; and mortal woe is mine. Since art the end it would not doth attain. Neither hath love, nor hath thy beauty part In my undoing : wrath, nor cruelty, Nor sovereign fate, this evil compasseth : If thou both death and pity in thy heart Dost carry : and so little wit have I, My love may nothing win from thence but death.

Selected Poem 3

As words with pen and ink by poets writ Are framed in lofty or in simple mood, And as the marble form is fair or rude, According to the mind that shapeth it ; So, dearest friend, for each proud glance there may A humble thought lie hid thy breast within, But that alone which is to me akin (As shows my face) can I aright portray. Who grief of heart with tears and sighs doth sow, (The dew, which falleth pure upon the soil. From diverse seeds a diverse nature gains) He for a harvest gathereth sheaves of woe : And who true beauty seeks with grievous toil Doth reap frail hopes, and sure and bitter pains.