Yet, by no custom chained,
His daring hand disdained
The academic forms by tamer souls admired.

"In his interior light
Awoke those shapes of might
Once known that never die;
Forms of titanic birth,
The elder brood of earth,
That fill the mind more grandly than they charm the eye.

"Yet when the master chose,
Ideal graces rose
Like flowers on gnarled boughs;
For he was nursed and fed
At beauty's fountain head
And to the goddess pledged his earliest warmest vows."

The poet describes still further the artist's character, and then
enumerates some of his great works. Whatever occupied him--

"Still proudly poised, he stepped
The way his vision swept,
And scorned the narrower view.
He touched with glory all
That pope or cardinal,
With lower aim than his, allotted him to do.

* * * * *