Leonardo da Vinci
The Accademia of Venice
LEONARDO saw the spring
Centuries ago,
Saw the spring and loved it in its flowers—
Violet, rose :
One that grows
Mystic, shining on the tufted bowers,
And burns its incense to the summer hours ;
And one that hiding low,
Half-face, half-wing,
With shaded wiles
Hides and yet smiles.
Leonardo drew the blooms
On an April day :
How his subtle pencil loved its toil,
Loved to draw !
For he saw
In the rose's amorous, open coil
Women's placid temples that would foil
Hearts in the luring way
That checks and dooms
Men with reserve
Of limpid curve.
Leonardo loved the still
Violet as it blows,
Plucked it from the darkness of its leaves,
Where it shoots
From wet roots ;
Found in it the precious smile that weaves
Sweetness round Madonna's mouth and heaves
Her secret lips, then goes,
At its fine will,
About her face
He loved to trace.
Leonardo drew in spring,
Restless spring gone by,
Flowers he chose should never after fade
For the wealth
Of strange stealth
In the rose, the violet's half-displayed,
Mysterious smile within the petals' shade
That season did not die,
Like everything,
Of ruin's blight
And April's flight.
Image: da Vinci, Leonardo, Studies of Flowers. Metalpoint, pen and ink on slightly brownish paper. 18.3 x 20.1 cm. © Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.
