Sonnet

On the picture of the Three Fates in the Palazzo Pitti at Flroence, usually ascribed to Michelangelo.

None but a Tuscan hand could fix ye here
In rigidness of sober colouring.
Pale are ye, mighty Triad, not with fear,
But the most awful knowledge, that the spring

Is in you of all birth, and act, and sense.
I sorrow to behold ye ; pain is blent
With your aloof and loveless permanence,
And your high princedom seems a punishment.

The cunning limner could not personate
Your blind control, save in th' aspect, of grief;
So does the thought repugn of sovran Fate.

Let him gaze here who trusts not in the love
Toward which all being solemnly doth move:
More this grand sadness tells, than forms of
fairest life.