As when, O lady mine,
With chiselled touch
The stone unhewn and cold
Becomes a living mould,
The more the marble wastes
The more the statue grows.
_Sonnet_. M. ANGELO. _Trans. of_ MRS. H. ROSCOE.
Sculpture is more than painting. It is greater
To raise the dead to life than to create
Phantoms that seem to live.
_Michael Angelo_. H.W. LONGFELLOW.
So stands the statue that enchants the world,
So bending tries to veil the matchless boast,
The mingled beauties of exulting Greece.
_The Seasons: Summer_. J. THOMSON.
And the cold marble leapt to life a god.
_The Belvedere Apollo_. H.H. MILMAN.
Or view the lord of the unerring bow,
The god of life, and poesy, and light.--
The sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow
All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
The shaft hath just been shot,--the arrow bright
With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity.
But in his delicate form--a dream of love,
Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast
Longed for a deathless lover from above,
And maddened in that vision--are exprest
All that ideal beauty ever blessed
The mind within its most unearthly mood,
When each conception was a heavenly guest,
A ray of immortality, and stood,
Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god!
_Childe Harold, Canto IV_. LORD BYRON.