JAMES LEE'S WIFE BY ROBERT BROWNING

VIII.—Beside the Drawing Board

                                III.

Little girl with the poor coarse hand
    I turned from to a cold clay cast—
I have my lesson, understand
    The worth of flesh and blood at last.
Nothing but beauty in a Hand?
    Because he could not change the hue,
    Mend the lines and make them true
To this which met his soul’s demand,
    Would Da Vinci turn from you?
I hear him laugh my woes to scorn—
“The fool forsooth is all forlorn
“Because the beauty, she thinks best,
“Lived long ago or was never born,—
“Because no beauty bears the test
“In this rough peasant Hand! Confessed!
“‘Art is null and study void!’
    “So sayest thou? So said not I,
    “Who threw the faulty pencil by,
“And years instead of hours employed,
“Learning the veritable use
    “Of flesh and bone and nerve beneath
    “Lines and hue of the outer sheath,
“If haply I might reproduce
“One motive of the powers profuse,
    “Flesh and bone and nerve that make
    “The poorest coarsest human hand
    “An object worthy to be scanned
“A whole life long for their sole sake.
“Shall earth and the cramped moment-space
“Yield the heavenly crowning grace?
“ Now the parts and then the whole!
“Who art thou, with stinted soul
    “And stunted body, thus to cry
“‘I love,—shall that be life’s strait dole?
    “‘I must live beloved or die!’
“This peasant hand that spins the wool
    “And bakes the bread, why lives it on,
    “Poor and coarse with beauty gone,—
“What use survives the beauty?” Fool! Go, little girl with the poor coarse hand!
I have my lesson, shall understand.