Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries, XXII. Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene, When our faith in the same has stood the test- There remaineth a rest for the people of God: XXIII. But at any rate I have loved the season My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan, My painter who but Cimabue? Nor ever was man of them all indeed, From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlandajo, XXIV. Their ghosts still stand, as I said before, Watching each fresco flaked and rasped, Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o'er: -No getting again what the church has grasped! The works on the wall must take their chance; "Works never conceded to England's thick clime!" (I hope they prefer their inheritance Of a bucketful of Italian quick-lime.) XXV. When they go at length, with such a shaking Of heads o'er the old delusion, sadly Each master his way through the black streets taking, XXVI. Not that I expect the great Bigordi, Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose; Nor the wronged Lippino; and not a word I Say of a scrap of Frà Angelico's: But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi, To grant me a taste of your intonaco, Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye? Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco? XXVII. 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 crumblyCould not Alesso Baldovinetti Contribute so much, I ask him humbly? Margheritone of Arezzo, XXVIII. With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?) Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion, Where in the foreground kneels the donor? If such remain, as is my conviction, The hoarding it does you but little honour. XXIX. They pass; for them the panels may thrill, Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English, XXX. No matter for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it,Oh, never! it shall not be counted true— That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover,— Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! and to whom?-to whom? XXXI. I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito, What if I take up my hope and prophesy? XXXII. When the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing, None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge), XXXIII. This time we'll shoot better game and bag 'em hot— (Ex: "Casa Guidi," quod videas ante) Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence, XXXIV. How we shall prologuize, how we shall perorate, Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero rate Show-monarchy ever its uncouth cub licks Out of the bear's shape into Chimæra's, While Pure Art's birth is still the republic's. XXXV. Then one shall propose in a speech (curt Tuscan, And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia XXXVI. Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold "DE GUSTIBUS-" I. YOUR ghost will walk, you lover of trees, In an English lane, By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies. The happier they! Draw yourself up from the light of the moon, |