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, 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,- 31. I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito, What if I take up my hope and prophesy? 32. When the hour is ripe, and a certain dotard 33. We'll shoot this time better game and bag 'em hct 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. 84. How we shall prologuize, how we shall perorate, Set truth at blood-heat and the false at a zero rate, Show, monarchy its uncouth cub licks Out of the bear's shape to the chimæra's 35. Then one shall propose (in a speech, curt Tuscan, 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 |