That feeling to express, or to improve, The gods become as mortals, and man's fate Has moments like their brightest, but the weight Of earth recoils upon us;-let it go! We can recal such visions, and create, From what has been, or might be, things which grow Into the statue's form, and look like gods below. LIII. I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands, The artist and his ape, to teach and tell How well his connoisseurship understands The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell: Let these describe the undescribable : I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream Wherein that image shall for ever dwell; The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream That ever left the sky, on the deep soul to beam. LIV. In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie 24 Ashes which make it holier, dust which is Even in itself an immortality, Though there were nothing save the past, and this, The particle of those sublimities Which have relaps'd to chaos:-here repose Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his, 25 The starry Galileo, with his woes; Here MACHIAVELLI's earth, return'd to whence it rose. 26 LV. These are four minds, which the elements, Might furnish forth creation :-Italy! Time, which hath wrong'd thee with ten thousands rents Of tline imperial garment, shall deny , And hath denied, to every other sky, Spirits which soar from ruin:-thy decay Such as the great of yore, CANOVA-is to-day. LVI. But where repose the all Etruscan three- Of the Hundred Tales of love-where did they lay LVII. Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, 27 With the remorse of ages; and the crown 29 Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore, His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled-not thine own, LVIII. Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed 30 His dust,—and lies it not her Great among, With 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, Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, While Florence vainly begs, her banish'd dead, and weeps. What is her pyramid of precious stones? 31 Of porphyry, jaspar, agate, and all hues 29 Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones Are gently prest with far more reverent tread Than ever paced the slab, which paves the princely head. 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 Is of another temper, and I, roam By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home; And torrents, swoln to rivers with their gore, Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scatter'd o'er. LXIII. Like to a forest fell'd by mountain winds; To all save carnage, An earthquake reel'd unheededly away!32 And yawning forth a grave for those who lay Such is the absorbing hate, when warring nations meet! LXIV. The Earth to them was as a rolling bark Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds From their down-topping nests, and bellowing herds Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath no words. LXV. Far other scene is Thrasimene now; |