But you are too fine, Taddeo Gaddi,
So grant me a taste of your intonaco--
Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?
No churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?
* * * * * * *
Margheritone of Arezzo,
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.
The conclusion of this poem rises to a climax:--
How shall we prologuise, how shall we perorate,
Say fit things upon art and history--
Set truth at blood-heat and the false at 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 chimaera's--
Pure Art's birth being still the republic's!
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.
Pages:
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340