III

Where worthier poets stood and sang before,

      I kiss their footsteps, yet their words gainsay:

I can but muse in hope upon this shore

      Of golden Arno, as it shoots away

Straight through the heart of Florence, 'neath the four

      Bent bridges, seeming to strain off like bows,

And tremble, while the arrowy undertide

      Shoots on and cleaves the marble as it goes,

And strikes up palace-walls on either side,

      And froths the cornice out in glittering rows,

With doors and windows quaintly multiplied,

      And terrace-sweeps, and gazers upon all,

By whom if flower or kerchief were thrown out,

      From any lattice there, the same would fall

Into the river underneath, no doubt,—

      It runs so close and fast 'twixt wall and wall.

How beautiful! The mountains from without

      Listen in silence for the word said next,

(What word will men say?) here where Giotto planted

      His campanile, like an unperplexed

Question to Heaven, concerning the things granted

      To a great people, who, being greatly vexed

In act, in aspiration keep undaunted!

      (What word says God?) The sculptor's Night and Day,

And Dawn and Twilight, wait in marble scorn,

      Like dogs couched on a dunghill, on the clay

From whence the Medicean stamp's outworn,—

      The final putting off of all such sway

By all such hands, and freeing of the unborn

In Florence, and the world outside his Florence.

That's Michel Angelo! his statues wait

      In the small chapel of the dim St. Lawrence!

Day's eyes are breaking bold and passionate

      Over his shoulder, and will flash abhorrence

On darkness, and with level looks meet fate,

      When once loose from that marble film of theirs:

The Night has wild dreams in her sleep; the Dawn

      Is haggard as the sleepless: Twilight wears

A sort of horror: as the veil withdrawn

      'Twixt the artist's soul and works had left them heirs

Of the deep thoughts which would not quail nor fawn,

      His angers and contempts, his hope and love;

For not without a meaning did he place

      Princely Urbino on the seat above

With everlasting shadow on his face;

      While the slow dawns and twilights disapprove

The ashes of his long-extinguished race,

      Which never shall clog more the feet of men.