Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps
Her corn and wine and oil, and Plenty leaps
To laughing life, with her redundant horn.
Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps
Was modern luxury of commerce born,

And buried learning rose, redeemed to a new morn.

There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills
The air around with beauty; we inhale
The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils
Part of its immortality; the veil

Of heaven is half undrawn; within the pale
We stand, and in that form and face behold
What mind can make, when Nature's self would

fail;

And to the fond idolaters of old

Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould.

We gaze and turn away, and know not where, Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart Reels with its fulness; there, forever there, Chained to the chariot of triumphal art, We stand as captives, and would not depart. Away! there need no words, nor terms precise, The paltry jargon of the marble mart, Where pedantry gulls folly,—we have eyes: Blood, pulse, and breast confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize.

Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise? Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or, In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies Before thee thy own vanquished lord of war? And gazing in thy face as toward a star, Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are With lava kisses melting while they burn, Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn!

Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love,
Their full divinity inadequate

That feeling to express, or to improve,

The gods become as mortals, and man's fate Has moments like their brightest; but the

weight

Of earth recoils upon us ;-let it go!

We can recall such visions, and create,

From what has been, or might be, things which

grow

Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below.

LORD BYRON.

GIOTTO'S TOWER

HOW MANY lives, made beautiful and sweet
By self-devotion and by self-restraint,
Whose pleasure is to run without complaint
On unknown errands of the Paraclete,

Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet,
Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint
Around the shining forehead of the saint,
And are in their completeness incomplete!
In the old Tuscan town stands Giotto's tower,
The lily of Florence blossoming in stone,—
A vision, a delight, and a desire,-
The builder's perfect and centennial flower,
That in the night of ages bloomed alone,
But wanting still the glory of the spire.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

OLD

OLD PICTURES IN FLORENCE

THE morn when first it thunders in March,
'The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say.
As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch
Of the villa-gate, this warm March day,
No flash snapt, no dumb thunder rolled

In the valley beneath, where, white and wide, Washed by the morning's water-gold,

Florence lay out on the mountain-side.

River and bridge and street and square
Lay mine, as much at my beck and call,
Through the live translucent bath of air,
As the sights in a magic crystal ball.
And of all I saw and of all I praised,

The most to praise and the best to see, Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised: But why did it more than startle me?

Giotto, how, with that soul of yours,
Could you play me false who loved you so?
Some slights if a certain heart endures

It feels, I would have your fellows know! Faith, I perceive not why I should care

To break a silence that suits them best, But the thing grows somewhat hard to bear When I find Giotto join the rest.

On the arch where olives overhead

Print the blue sky with twig and leaf (That sharp-curled leaf they never shed), "Twixt the aloes I used to lean in chief, And mark through the winter afternoons,

By a gift God grants me now and then, In the mild decline of those suns like moons, Who walked in Florence, besides her men.

They might chirp and chaffer, come and go For pleasure or profit, her men alive,— My business was hardly with them, I trow, But with empty cells of the human hive; With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch, The church's apsis, aisle or nave,

Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch,Its facè, set full for the sun to shave.

Wherever a fresco peels and drops,

Wherever an outline weakens and wanes
Till the latest life in the painting stops,
Stands one whom each fainter pulse-tick
pains!

One, wishful each scrap should clutch its brick,
Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster,—
A lion who dies of an ass's kick,

The wronged great soul of an ancient master.

For O, this world and the wrong it does!

They are safe in heaven with their backs to it, The Michaels and Rafaels you hum and buzz Round the works of, you of the little wit; Do their eyes contract to the earth's old scope, Now that they see God face to face,

And have all attained to be poets, I hope? 'Tis their holiday now, in any case.

ROBERT BROWNING.

THE STATUE OF LORENZO DE MEDICI

MARK me how still I am!-The sound of feet
Unnumbered echoing through this vaulted hall,
Placed high in my memorial niche and seat,
In cold and marble meditation meet,

Or voices harsh, on me unheeded fall,
Among proud tombs and pomp funereal
Of rich sarcophagi and sculptured wall,-