“Poem 46, ca. 1528”
“If my crude hammer shapes the hard stones
into one human appearance or another,
deriving its motion from the master who guides it,
3
watches and holds it, it moves at another’s pace.
But that divine one, which lodges and dwells in heaven,
5
beautifies self and others by its own action;
and if no hammer can be made without a hammer,
by that living one every other one is made.
And since a blow becomes more powerful
9
the higher it’s raised up over the forge,
10
that one’s flown up to heaven above my own.
11
So now my own will fail to be completed
12
unless the divine smithy, to help make it,
gives it that aid which was unique on earth.”
