In Florence, and the world outside his Florence.
That's Michel Angelo! his statues wait
In the small chapel of the dim St. Lawrence![1]
Day's eyes are breaking bold and passionate
Over his shoulder, and will flash abhorrence
On darkness, and with level looks meet fate,
When once loose from that marble film of theirs:
The Night has wild dreams in her sleep; the Dawn
Is haggard as the sleepless: Twilight wears
A sort of horror: as the veil withdrawn
'Twixt the artist's soul and works had left them heirs
Of the deep thoughts which would not quail nor fawn,
His angers and contempts, his hope and love;
For not without a meaning did he place
Princely Urbino on the seat above
With everlasting shadow on his face;
While the slow dawns and twilights disapprove
The ashes of his long-extinguished race,
Which never shall clog more the feet of men.
IV.
That winter-hour, in Via Larga, when
Thou wert commanded to build up in snow[2]
Some marvel of thine art, which straight again
Dissolved beneath the sun's Italian glow,
- ↑ In the Sagrestia Nuovo, where the statues of Day and Night, Dawn and Twilight, recline on the tombs of Giuliano de' Medici, third son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Lorenzo of Urbino, his grandson. Strozzi's epigram on the Night, with Michel Angelo's rejoinder, is well known.
- ↑ This mocking task was set by Pietro, the unworthy successor of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
