LII. Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, That feeling to express, or to improve, The gods become as mortals, and man's fate We can recal such visions, and create, From what has been, or might be, things which grow Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below. LIII. I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands, The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell: I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam. VOL. II. I LIV. In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie (27) Ashes which make it holier, dust which is Even in itself an immortality, Though there were nothing save the past, and this, Which have relapsed to chaos:-here repose- The starry Galileo, with his woes; Here Machiavelli's earth, return'd to whence it rose. (29) LV. These are four minds, which, like the elements, Might furnish forth creation:-Italy! Time, which hath wrong'd thee with ten thousand rents, Of thine imperial garment, shall deny, And hath denied, to every other sky, Which gilds it with revivifying ray; Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day. LVI. But where repose the all Etruscan threeDante, 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, distinguish'd from our common clay In death as life? Are they resolved to dust, And have their country's marbles nought to say? Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust? Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust? LVII. Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, (30) His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled-not thine own. LVIII. Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeath'd (33) His dust, and lies it not her Great among, With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed O'er him who form'd 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 hyæna bigot's wrong, No more amidst the meaner dead find room, Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom! LIX. 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! honour'd sleeps The immortal exile;-Arqua, too, her store Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, While Florence vainly begs her banish'd dead and weeps. LX. What is her pyramid of precious stones? (34) Of Are gently prest with far more reverent tread Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head LXI. There be more things to greet the heart and eyes My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields, Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields |