27.

Could not the ghost with the close red cap,

My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman,

Save me a sample, give me the hap

Of a muscular Christ that shows the draughtsman?

No Virgin by him, the somewhat petty,
of finical touch and tempera crumbly-
Could not Alesso Baldovinetti

Contribute so much, I ask him humbly?

Margheritone of Arezzo,

28.

With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret, (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,

You bald, saturnine, poll-clawed parrot?) No poor glimmering Crucifixion,

Where in the foreground kneels the donor?

If such remain, as is my conviction,

The hoarding does you but little honour.

29.

They pass for them the panels may thrill,

The tempera grow alive and tinglish

Rot or are left to the mercies still

Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English!

Seeing mere money's worth in their prize,

Who sell it to some one calm as Zeno

At naked Art, and in ecstacies

Before some clay-cold, vile Carlino !

30.

No matter for these! But Giotto, you,

Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it, Never! it shall not be counted true

That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover,Buried so long in oblivion's womb, Was left for another than I to discover,

Turns up at last, and to whom? — to whom?

31.

I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito,
(Or was it rather the Ognissanti ?)
Stood on the altar-steps, patient and weary too!
Nay, I shall have it yet, detur amanti!
My Koh-i-noor-or (if that's a platitude)
Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi's eye!
So, in anticipative gratitude,

What if I take up my hope and prophesy?

32.

When the hour is ripe, and a certain dotard
Pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing,
To the worse side of the Mont St. Gothard,
Have, to begin by way of rejoicing,
None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge)
No civic guards, all plumes and lacquer,
Hunting Radetzky's soul like a partridge
Over Morello with squib and cracker.

33.

We'll shoot this time better game and bag 'em hot —

No display at the stone of Dante,

But a kind of Witan-agemot

("Casa Guidi," quod videas ante)

To ponder Freedom restored to Florence,

How Art may return that departed with her. Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine's! And bring us the days of Orgagna hither.

34.

How we shall prologuize, how we shall perorate,
Say fit things upon art and history

Set truth at blood-heat and the false at a zero rate,
Make of the want of the age no mystery!
Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras,

Show, monarchy its uncouth cub licks

Out of the bear's shape to the chimæra's -
Pure Art's birth being still the republic's!

35.

Then one shall propose (in a speech, curt Tuscan,
Sober, expurgate, spare of an "issimo,”)
Ending our half-told tale of Cambuscan,
Turning the Bell-tower's altaltissimo.
And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia
The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally,
Soars up in gold its full fifty braccia,
Completing Florence, as Florence, Italy.

36.

Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold
Is broken away, and the long-pent fire
Like the golden hope of the world unbaffled

Springs from its sleep, and up goes the spireAs, "God and the People" plain for its motto, Thence the new tricolor flaps at the sky? Foreseeing the day that vindicates Giotto

And Florence together, the first am I!

Give me them again, those hands

Put them upon my forehead, how it throbs!

Press them before my eyes, the fire comes through,

You cruellest, you dearest in the world,
Let me the Queen must grant whate'er I ask
How can I gain you and not ask the Queen?
There she stays waiting for me, here stand you.
Some time or other this was to be asked,

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