Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MICHAEL ANGELO: THE DEAD CHRIST by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Poet Analysis

First Line: O DEATH,WHY IS IT I CANNOT PORTRAY
Last Line: SO NEAR TO DEATH, AND YET SO FAR FROM GOD!
Subject(s): DEATH; JESUS CHRIST; MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI (1475-1564); DEAD, THE;
MICHAEL ANGELO'S @3studio@1. MICHAEL ANGELO, @3with a light, working upon the
Dead Christ. Midnight.@1

MICHAEL ANGELO.
O Death, why is it I cannot portray
Thy form and features? Do I stand too near thee?
Or dost thou hold my hand, and draw me back,
As being thy disciple, not thy master?
Let him who knows not what old age is like
Have patience till it comes, and he will know.
I once had skill to fashion Life and Death
And Sleep, which is the counterfeit of Death;
And I remember what Giovanni Strozzi
Wrote underneath my statue of the Night
In San Lorenzo, ah, so long ago!

Grateful to me is sleep! More grateful now
Than it was then; for all my friends are dead;
And she is dead, the noblest of them all.
I saw her face, when the great sculptor Death,
Whom men should call Divine, had at a blow
Stricken her into marble; and I kissed
Her cold white hand. What was it held me back
From kissing her fair forehead, and those lips,
Those dead, dumb lips? Grateful to me is sleep!

@3Enter@1 GIORGIO VASARI.

GIORGIO.
Good-evening, or good-morning, for I know not
Which of the two it is.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
How came you in?

GIORGIO.
Why, by the door, as all men do.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Ascanio
Must have forgotten to bolt it.

GIORGIO.
Probably.
Am I a spirit, or so like a spirit,
That I could slip through bolted door or window?
As I was passing down the street, I saw
A glimmer of light, and heard the well-known chink
Of chisel upon marble. So I entered,
To see what keeps you from your bed so late.

MICHAEL ANGELO, coming forward with the lamp.
You have been revelling with your boon companions,
Giorgio Vasari, and you come to me
At an untimely hour.

GIORGIO.
The Pope hath sent me.
His Holiness desires to see again
The drawing you once showed him of the dome
Of the Basilica.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
We will look for it.

GIORGIO.
What is the marble group that glimmers there
Behind you?

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Nothing, and yet everything,--
As one may take it. It is my own tomb,
That I am building.

GIORGIO.
Do not hide it from me.
By our long friendship and the love I bear you,
Refuse me not!

MICHAEL ANGELO, letting fall the lamp.
Life hath become to me
An empty theatre,--its lights extinguished,
The music silent, and the actors gone;
And I alone sit musing on the scenes
That once have been. I am so old that Death
Oft plucks me by the cloak, to come with him
And some day, like this lamp, shall I fall down,
And my last spark of life will be extinguished.
Ah me! ah me! what darkness of despair!
So near to death, and yet so far from God!




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