“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,
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watches and holds it, it moves at another’s pace.
But that divine one, which lodges and dwells in heaven,
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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
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the higher it’s raised up over the forge,
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that one’s flown up to heaven above my own.
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So now my own will fail to be completed
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unless the divine smithy, to help make it,
gives it that aid which was unique on earth.”
Art History Ramblings 