That was the bridegroom. At day's brink Calmly he said that her lot was cast, The world, meanwhile, its noise and stir, Since passing the door might lead to a feast, Meanwhile, worse fates than a lover's fate And she she watched the square like a book Holding one picture, and only one, Which daily to find she undertook. When the picture was reached the book was done, And she turned from it all night to scheme Of tearing it out for herself next sun. Weeks grew months, years, - gleam by gleam The glory dropped from youth and love, And both perceived they had dreamed a dream, Which hovered as dreams do, still above, One day, as the lady saw her youth The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked,· Fronting her silent in the glass, "Him, the carver, a hand to aid, Who moulds the clay no love will change, And fixes a beauty never to fade. Let Robbia's craft so apt and strange Arrest the remains of young and fair, And rivet them while the seasons range. Make me a face on the window there Waiting as ever, mute the while, My love to pass below in the square! But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace, Was set where now is the empty shrine, (With, leaning out of a bright blue space, As a ghost might from a chink of sky, The passionate pale lady's face, Eying ever with earnest eye And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch, The Duke sighed like the simplest wretch In Florence, So my dream escapes ! Will its record stay?" And he bade them fetch Some subtle fashioner of shapes, "Can the soul, the will, die out of a man Ere his body find the grave that gapes ? John of Douay shall work my plan, Mould me on horseback here aloft, Alive, (the subtle artisan!) "In the very square I cross so oft! That men may admire, when future suns Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft, "While the mouth and the brow are brave in bronze, Admire and say, 'When he was alive, How he would take his pleasure once!' "And it shall go hard but I contrive * Robert Browning. IN SANTA CROCE. Santa Croce's holy precincts lie 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 returned to whence it rose. These are four minds, which, like the elements, Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand rents And hath denied, to every other sky, But where repose the all Etruscan three, - Of the Hundred Tales of love, where did they lay Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, 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 passing sigh, because it told for whom. And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust; While Florence vainly begs her banished dead, and weeps. Lord Byron. |