Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 102-118
All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope
My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?
Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,
They glitter like your mother's for my soul,
Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,
Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase
With grapes, and add a visor and a Term,
And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,
To comfort me on my entablature
Whereon I am to lie till I must ask
"Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there!
For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
To death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone—
Gritstone, a crumble! Clammy squares which sweat
As if the corpse they keep were oozing through—
And no more lapis to delight the world!
- Nope. If you were expecting some kind of deathbed reflection, the bishop's going to disappoint you. He goes right back to his decorating demands.
- Unless he gets that lapis lazuli (see line 42), he's going to give his villas to the Pope, not his sons.
- Their eyes, by the way, remind the bishop of their mothers' eyes—and not in a good way. They glitter, but they also move like a lizard's eyes. That's quite an unflattering simile.
- The bishop continues with his demands: put some grapes in the vase, add a carving of a mask and pillar ("a visor and a Term" (108)), and throw in a lynx carving while you're at it. These will all comfort him in death, or at least when he can't tell the difference between life and death anymore.
- Then the bishop gets mad at his sons all over again, telling them to leave him. They want him to die, after all, and they're just going to give him a crumbly, leaky tomb without any lapis lazuli—at least, that's his take on them.