08 July 2010

Andrea del Sarto/The Faultless Painter (Robert Browning)

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!