III.
Where worthier poets stood and sang before,
I kiss their footsteps, yet their words gainsay:
I can but muse in hope upon this shore
Of golden Arno, as it shoots away
Straight through the heart of Florence, 'neath the four
Bent bridges, seeming to strain off like bows,
And tremble, while the arrowy undertide
Shoots on and cleaves the marble as it goes,
And strikes up palace-walls on either side,
And froths the cornice out in glittering rows,
With doors and windows quaintly multiplied,
And terrace-sweeps, and gazers upon all,
By whom if flower or kerchief were thrown out,
From any lattice there, the same would fall
Into the river underneath, no doubt,—
It runs so close and fast 'twixt wall and wall.
How beautiful! The mountains from without
Listen in silence for the word said next,
(What word will men say?) here where Giotto planted
His campanile, like an unperplexed
Question to Heaven, concerning the things granted
To a great people, who, being greatly vexed
In act, in aspiration keep undaunted!
(What word says God?) The sculptor's Night and Day,
And Dawn and Twilight, wait in marble scorn,
Like dogs couched on a dunghill, on the clay
From whence the Medicean stamp's outworn,—
The final putting off of all such sway
By all such hands, and freeing of the unborn
