ORVIETO

AN EPISODE

VASARI tells that Luca Signorelli,

The morning star of Michael Angelo,

Had but one son, a youth of seventeen summers, Who died. That day the master at his easel Wielded the liberal brush wherewith he painted At Orvieto, on the Duomo's walls,

Stern forms of Death and Heaven and Hell and

Judgment.

Then came they to him, and cried: "Thy son is dead,

Slain in a duel; but the bloom of life

Yet lingers round red lips and downy cheek."
Luca spoke not, but listen'd. Next they bore
His dead son to the silent painting-room,
And left on tiptoe son and sire alone.

Still Luca spoke and groan'd not; but he rais'd
The wonderful dead youth, and smooth'd his hair,
Wash'd his red wounds, and laid him on a bed,
Naked and beautiful, where rosy curtains
Shed a soft glimmer of uncertain splendour
Life-like upon the marble limbs below.

Then Luca seiz'd his palette: hour by hour Silence was in the room; none durst approach: Morn wore to noon, and noon to eve, when shyly A little maid peep'd in, and saw the painter Painting his dead son with unerring handstroke, Firm and dry-ey'd before the lordly canvas.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

VEII

THE DESOLATION OF VEII

'Twas on a Sabbath morning that we wandered in the wood,

Where near three thousand years ago the ancient Veii stood;

There's not a sound of life there now, where wandering alleys meet,

The cylamen and violet grow purple in the street! The glens are deep and leafy, the fields are green and bare,

And only scattered pottery tells that arts and trade were there,

And looking towards the Alban Mount across the solemn plains,

The ground on which we stand is all of Veii that remains.

A hundred thousand people once dwelt upon this hill,

Within their many-towered walls the hum was never still.

The sculptor and the armorer worked as soon as it was light,

And watchman unto watchman called through all the starry night.

They had laws, and arts, and customs, and altars to revere;

They buried with a solemn care the dead whom they held dear,

Whom they crowned with golden ivy and with oakleaves never sere.

And the city on the hill-top where this people had their home

Was a larger town than Athens and a mightier town than Rome.

A wondrous place is Veii, and the grandeur of her

past

Will linger in these solitudes and crown her to the

last.

Still I see her in a vision, though her very streets

are ploughed,

See the faces of her people, hear the voices of her

crowd,

See the waving of her banners, hear the tramp of armed men,

Where nothing but the waterfall is dashing down.

the glen.

Other cities have their columned hills and fragments of their walls,

Or at least their ruined temples, on which the moonlight falls.

Other cities have their solemn sights, to which the pilgrim turns,

And some altar of tradition where a lamp forever

burns,

A ballad or a legend, or a few memorial stones, And a breath of living history to reanimate their

bones.

But of Veii, strong and beautiful, these silent stones are all,

Save her graves within the hillside and a patch of ruined wall,

And the rocks cut sheer to guard her, and the streams that flow the same,

And (foreign to the pilgrim's lips) the accents of her name!

BESSIE RAYNER PARKES.