The words cut deeply through the pupil’s heart,
But silently, without a sigh he left,
The master knowing not, that bitter frost
Crept slowly into Donnatello’s soul.
From that night on, illness and secret grief
Have settled on the artist’s burdened mind;
No trace remains of his once cheerful smile,
Around his lips, nor in the sunken eyes.
Day after day, he prods and meditates
Before the statue, musing restlessly,
Seeking its faults and finding more and more,
Until, at length, the statue seems to him
One huge mistake throughout its stony mass
And as to dust of hopes, crumbles the edifice
Fashioned by Donnatello from his dreams,
Burying in the ruins’ smouldering dust
All that was once immortal in the man.
And of his being, nothing more remains
But that which slowly turns to dust again,
And Donnatello sadly faces death . . .
He even lacks the strength to leave his rooms,
And sits all day within the sunlit door,
An infirm, aged man, whose dying eyes
Are fastened far beyond, upon his towering work,
And those who pass his feeble staring form
Bathe with their tears his blue-veined, wasted hands;
And maidens shower roses in his lap,
Like flowers thrown into a gaping grave
Then came the day he took unto his bed
From which it was his lot never more to rise,
And Donnatello for his master sends
To come to him and bid him farewell.
The master comes into the silent room,
Where stream, like gold, the warm rays of the sun
And where the black-birds’ sparkling song is heard
As if to cheer once more, with song and light
The sadly disillusioned, dying heart.
The master speaks, his voice replete with grief;
“What pain tormented you, angelic soul?
What broke the lily blossom of your life?
What grieved you so that I, an aged man,
Over your death-bed tear my snow-white hair?”
72
