Poems (Mary Coleridge)/Poem 13

​
XIII IN THE BRERA
Full many a painter in the early daysDreamt that he saw the Lord, and dreaming, smiled.Yet saw he nothing save a little child,The baby angels round him singing praise;Nothing he saw except the heavenward gaze,The pure compassion of the undefiled:Or else a man of sorrows, patient, mild,His thoughts our thoughts, his ways our human ways.
Thou only, Leonardo, didst beholdThat which their eyes, desiring, sought in vain;And if—since thou wert cast in mortal mould—Not all thy hand might do was free from stain,All that was not immortal, making old,Time painted out, and left the vision plain.
This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.