SANTA CROCE

IN Santa Croce's holy precincts lie

Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality,

Though they were nothing save the past, and this

The particle of those sublimities

Which have relapsed to chaos;-here repose
Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his,

The starry Galileo, with his woes;

Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it

rose.

These are four minds, which, like the elements,
Might furnish forth creation ;-Italy!
Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thou-
sand rents

Of thine imperial garment, shall deny,
And hath denied, to every other sky,
Spirits which soar from ruin; thy decay
Is still impregnate with divinity,
Which gilds it with revivifying ray;

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,
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore;
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,
Proscribed the bard whose name forevermore
Their children's children would in vain adore
With the remorse of ages; and the crown
Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely

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
His dust, and lies it not her Great among,
With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed
O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren
tongue,-

That music in itself, whose sounds are song,
The poetry of speech? No; even his tomb
Uptorn, must bear the hyena bigots' wrong,

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,
Santa Maria Novella church. You pass
The left stair, where, at plague-time, Macchiavel
Saw one with set fair face as in a glass,
Dressed out against the fear of death and hell,
Rustling her silks in pauses of the mass,

To keep the thought of how her husband fell,
When she left home, stark dead across her

feet,

The stair leads up to what Orgagna gave
Of Dante's dæmons; but you, passing it,
Ascend the right stair of the farther nave,

To muse in a small chapel scarcely lit
By Cimabue's Virgin. Bright and brave,
That picture was accounted, mark, of old!
A king stood bare before its sovran grace;
A reverent people shouted to behold
The picture, not the king; and even the place
Containing such a miracle, grew bold,

Named the Glad Borgo from that beauteous face,
Which thrilled the artist, after work, to think
That his ideal Mary-smile should stand

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
Upon the Arno, as St. Michael's own
Was planted on the dragon. Fold by fold
Beneath me as it struggles, I behold

Its glistening scales. Twice hath it overthrown
My kindred and companions. Me alone
It moveth not, but is by me controlled.
I can remember when the Medici

Were driven from Florence; longer still ago
The final wars of Ghibelline and Guelf.
Florence adorns me with her jewelry;
And when I think that Michael Angelo
Hath leaned on me, I glory in myself.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

THE VENUS DE MEDICI

BUT ARNO wins us to the fair white walls,
Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps
A softer feeling for her fairy halls.