SANTA MARIA NOVELLA. R enter, in your Florence wanderings, OR Santa Maria Novella church. You pass The left stair, where, at plague-time, Macchiavel Saw one with set fair face as in a glass, Dressed out against the fear of death and hell, Rustling her silks in pauses of the mass, Of Dante's dæmons; but you, passing it, That picture was accounted, mark, of old! Named the Glad Borgo from that beauteous face, That his ideal Mary-smile should stand So very near him!-- he, within the brink Of all that glory, let in by his hand With too divine a rashness! Yet none shrink Who gaze here now, albeit the thing is planned Sublimely in the thought's simplicity. The Virgin, throned in empyreal state, Minds only the young babe upon her knee; While, each side, angels bear the royal weight, The head of no such critic, and his blood Wherewith along the streets the people bore Until they stooped and entered the church door! Elizabeth Barrett Browning. GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE. NCHASED with precious marbles, pure and rare, ENCH How gracefully it soars, and seems the while From every polished stage to laugh and smile, Mid life's rough sea of sorrow, force, and guile, In this seclusion, call it not a prison, O Tuscan Priestess! gladly would I watch All night one note of thy loud hymn to catch Sent forth to greet the sun, when first, new-risen, He shines on that aerial station only! Aubrey de Vere. GIOTTO'S TOWER. HOW many lives, made beautiful and sweet By self-devotion and by self-restraint, The builder's perfect and centennial flower, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. THE OLD BRIDGE AT FLORENCE. ПADDEO GADDI built me. I am old, TADDEO Five centuries old. I plant my foot of stone Upon the Arno, as St. Michael's own Its glistening scales. Twice hath it overthrown Were driven from Florence; longer still ago The final wars of Ghibelline and Guelf. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. SAN MINIATO. WHILE slow on Miniato's height I roam, And backward look to Brunelleschi's dome, "T is strange to think that here on many a day Old Michael Angelo has paced his way: And watching Florence, in his bosom found A nobler world than that which lies around. To him, perhaps, the ghost of Dante came At sunset, with his pride of mournful fame. By me the twain, the bard and sculptor stand, With strong lip gazing and uplifted hand: The great, the sad, fighters in ages past, With their full peace fill e'en the weak at last. John Sterling. SHE CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. HE came, whom Casa Guidi's chambers knew, And know more proudly, an immortal, now; The air without a star was shivered through With the resistless radiance of her brow, And glimmering landscapes from the darkness grew. Thin, phantom-like; and yet she brought me rest, Unspoken words, an understood command Sealed weary lids with sleep, together pressed And smoothed the folded cloth above the breast. Now, looking through these windows, where the day Of autumn shrubs, and green with glossy bay, The quiet brow; the face so frail and fair Who could forget those features, having known? Ah, in the silence she has left behind The tablet tells you, "Here she wrote and died," |