The bloody sheet. Look there! Look there!' he cried. 'Blood calls for blood- and from a father's hand! -Unless thyself will save him that sad office. What!' he exclaimed, when shuddering at the sight, Yes, thou must die, lest others fall by thee, And, kneeling on the ground, Great God!' he cried, Well might a Youth,* He came, a visitant, to Cosmo's court, Think on the past; and, as he wandered through * DE THOU. †The Palazzo Vecchio. Cosmo had left it several years before. Silent, deserted-stop awhile to dwell Those of the unhappy brothers, and conclude That very COSMO shaking o'er his fire, Drowsy and deaf and inarticulate, Wrapt in his night-gown, o'er a sick man's mess, THE CAMPAGNA OF FLORENCE. 'Tis morning. Let us wander through the fields, * GIOTTO. From that small spire, just caught By the bright ray, that church among the rest By One of Old distinguished as The Bride,* Let us in thought pursue (what can we better?) Those who assembled there at matin-time;† Who, when Vice revelled and along the street Tables were set, what time the bearer's bell Rang to demand the dead at every door, Came out into the meadows; and, awhile Wandering in idleness, but not in folly, Sat down in the high grass and in the shade Of many a tree sun-proof-day after day, When all was still and nothing to be heard But the cicala's voice among the olives, Relating in a ring, to banish care, Their hundred tales. Round the green hill they went, Round underneath-first to a splendid house, Gherardi, as an old tradition runs, That on the left, just rising from the vale; Not unprepared, fragrant and gay with flowers. That on the right, now known as the Palmieri, Santa Maria Novella. For its grace and beauty it was called by Michael Angelo 'La Sposa.' In the year of the Great Plague. See the Decameron. |