Michelangelo by Rhys Carpenter Essay Example For Students

Michelangelo by Rhys Carpenter Essay I Stern and grim-visaged, gaunt, and dark of gaze, Time crouches in the outer-world of night Amid the shifting and entangled maze Of dusk and star-shine and half-lightless light, And with strong fingers moulds the unformed clay, Ruling the refluence of night and day With shape of sun and satellite. All men he fashions and all living things, All aspiration and all great desire, The might of conquerors, the strength of kings, The universal forces, good or dire, The star dust blown through windy heights of space, The glimmer from the utmost bounds of place, The thunderous comet flight of fire. One dream he holds forever in his eyes And vainly strives to fashion with his hands, A wonder world of storm unclouded skies And mystically Spring encompassed lands, A vision of all men become as Gods, Unbroken with despair, unbowed by rods, Freed of all tyrants subtle bands. Ever his hands are set within the clay To mould therein some flawless masterpiece, Some image strong and perfect for alway ; Yet ever, when creative fingers cease Their toil at length and Time beholds the deed, He knows it faulty, as a rotted reed Whereon no lips shall ever play. Therefore all things are shattered by Times will, And dust, made clay, crumbles again to dust, And nought endures forever, good or ill, Not joy nor pain, not love nor bitter lust, But all things pass and are forgotten all, Like brown and sear frost-stricken leaves that fall Before the winter winds first gust. Yet is not all in vain, for oftenwhile Beneath the hands of Time some soul more fair Fulfils existence without taint or guile And sets his feet upon the upward Stair. These are the artists of the world, whose breath Blows on the spark of shifting life and death Until the beacon fires upflare. So wrought the hands of Time and fashioned One And bade him live and move among mankind And gave him sight of star and moon and sun And cognizance of passion strong and blind, Of visions high and fearless, and of dreams More strange and fair than glimpse of sunless streams Or phantom voices of the wind. Gazing upon this child of his dim brain Time saw him toiling on the earth below Through pain to splendid hope, through hope to pain, Beheld strange wonders from his dreaming grow, Beheld men marvel at him when they saw, Fearless and naked, without stain or flaw, The works of Michelangelo. II We gaze on life as one who holds a glass Across whose surface hasten restless gleams, Where dim processionals half hidden pass Through lands where no full-flooded daylight streams. We know not what we see nor by what breath The mirrors face is clouded as with death; All is but as a world of dreams. We are engirt with mystery; our way Is fraught with shadow: from amazed eyes We watch lifes ocean with its flux and sway And of its hidden depths have no surmise. All men alike are brought forth frail and weak, With limbs that fail them, lips that cannot speak, And strength that serves tut sorry wise, Yet each man moveth into solitude And none shall know what thoughts his hands obey, Nor with what might his visions are imbued, Nor on what height his feet tread out their way. Imperishable thought, immortal will Their unknown course foreorder and fulfil And no man sees what path they stray. How shall we know, then, with what ardors heat Lived, grew and labored Michelangelo, Upon what upward hills he set his feet, How thought and dreamed ? Alas, how shall we know ? For he that stoopeth at the deep streams brink May only from the idle surface drink And knoweth not the hidden flow. And with what thoughts did he at table sit Within the house of that de Medici Among whose praises foremost it is writ That he foreknew the sculptor that should be; How strove he with the visions that assailed His growing power, how triumphed and how failed, How prospered in his artistry? Poetry EssayFalse lights beguiled him never, in the day He saw the sun and knew no lesser beam, Within the night glittered the stars alway With steadfast and unalterable gleam. What need to follow marsh-lights of the earth? Across the heavens immeasurable girth The vast eternal starways stream. No lanterns of the deep, unlighted fen, No faithless lure across the floorless sedge Led him within the kingdom of lost men Where rules the Marsh-king. At the pools black edge He stood unmoved and watched the shifting light That strove to draw him down to endless night In depths where no mans net may dredge. False passions held him not, nor stain of lust; He knew not envy and he kept unknown The sight of them who ceaselessly upthrust Hates Gorgon head, turning the world to stone. He lived in silence, seeking no mans praise, And none might turn him from his changeless ways, He wrought unresting, and alone. All Italy was darkened when he died And Florence was a city without light; All men laid from them jealousy and pride To praise this man departed from their sight ; And ever one unto another said, The last great sculptor of the world is dead, The last great soul hath taken flight. V Beyond all worlds within the thought of man, Time sits before his ceaseless task and turns The stars that, too, endure but for a span, The light that but for some short cycle burns. His hands destroy all things, his hands create All things but to destruction: not in hate But sorrow, each new toil he spurns. St. Peters dome shall one day be no more, The ceilings of the Sistine Chapel fade And all its splendor with dim mould run oer And all its lights be darkened into shade, The David shall be stricken and the tomb Of San Lorenzo visited with gloom, Marble and dust be equal made; And men of some strange other race than ours Shall wander in the alien hills of Borne, And where St. Peters was shall blossom flowers To hide the ruins of a shattered dome; Then fame of Michelangelo shall be As far-off clamor of an unknown sea, As whisper of the wind-swept foam. Peace ! peace ! against immutable decree Strive not in idle battle, for thy sword Shall shiver into shards, and Destiny Oerrun the world plain with her phantom horde. What knowledge hast thou of the Faultless Plan, What vision of the purposes of man, That thou shouldst turn against thy lord? Thou canst not say unto what final end, What triumph or what sorrowful despair, Thine own life moves and thy poor efforts tend, Or whether thine own deeds are false or fair. And if of this mans toil no stone remain, Canst thou yet say that he has wrought in vain With visions woven out of air? For genius is not as the lightless spheres That move forever round one central sun In changeless motion through unchanging years And must alway return whence they begun, But as some splendid flame-enveloped star Drawn inward from dusk outer-worlds afar, Whose coming is foreseen of none : And if the sun grow cold and earths that move Forever in one steadfast orbits reign Be lost in shadow, shalt thou therefor prove No limit to the shadowlands domain, Or say there is no space transcending space? Nay; set no mournful issue to thy race; Genius has never been in vain ; Through thronging pathways where dull planets turn It moves upon the fierce wings of its flight Till full against the sun its passions burn, Then wheels and thunders outward into night, Beyond the furthest planetary spheres, Beyond the cycles of the changing years, Into unfurrowed fields of light. Rhys Carpenter.