SANTA CROCE IN Santa Croce's holy precincts lie Ashes which make it holier, dust which is Though they were nothing save the past, and this The particle of those sublimities Which have relapsed to chaos;-here repose The starry Galileo, with his woes; Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose. These are four minds, which, like the elements, sand rents Of thine imperial garment, shall deny, Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day. But where repose the all Etruscan three,— Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they, The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he Of the Hundred Tales of love,-where did they lay Their bones, distinguished from our common clay In death as life? Are they resolved to dust, And have their country's marbles naught to say? Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust? Did they not to her breast their filial earth intrust? Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, wore, Upon a far and foreign soil had grown, His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled,—not thine own. Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed That music in itself, whose sounds are song, No more amidst the meaner dead find room, Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom. And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust; Yet for this want more noted, as of yore The Cæsar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust, Did but of Rome's best son remind her more. Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore, Fortress of falling empire, honoured sleeps The immortal exile;-Arqua, too, her store Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, While Florence vainly begs her banished dead, and LORD BYRON. weeps. SANTA MARIA NOVELLA OR ENTER, in your Florence wanderings, To keep the thought of how her husband fell, feet, The stair leads up to what Orgagna gave To muse in a small chapel scarcely lit A reverent people shouted to behold Named the Glad Borgo from that beauteous face, So very near him!-he, within the brink Of all that glory, let in by his hand With too divine a rashness! Yet none shrink Who gaze here now,-albeit the thing is planned Sublimely in the thought's simplicity. The Virgin, throned in empyreal state, Minds only the young babe upon her knee; While, each side, angels bear the royal weight, Prostrated meekly, smiling tenderly Oblivion of their wings! the Child thereat Stretches its hand like God. If any should, Because of some stiff draperies and loose joints, Gaze scorn down from the heights of Rafaelhood, On Cimabue's picture,-Heaven anoints The head of no such critic, and his blood The poet's curse strikes full on, and appoints To ague and cold spasms forevermore. A noble picture! worthy of the shout Wherewith along the streets the people bore Its cherub faces, which the sun threw out Until they stooped and entered the church door! ELIZABETH Barrett BrowNING. THE OLD BRIDGE AT FLORENCE TADDEO GADDI built me. I am old, Five centuries old. I plant my foot of stone Its glistening scales. Twice hath it overthrown Were driven from Florence; longer still ago HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. THE VENUS DE MEDICI BUT ARNO wins us to the fair white walls, |