That Miriam dashed her cymbals to surprise
The sun between her white arms flung apart,
With new, glad, golden sounds? that David's strings
O'erflowed his hand with music from his heart?
So harmony grows full from many springs,
And happy accident turns holy art.
X.
Santa Maria Novella church. You pass
The left stair, where, at plague-time, Macchiavel[1]
Saw one with set fair face as in a glass,
Dressed out against the fear of death and hell,
Rustling her silks in pauses of the mass,
To keep the thought off how her husband fell,
When she left home, stark dead across her feet—
The stair leads up to what Orgagna gave
Of Dante's dæmons; but you, passing it,
Ascend the right stair of the farther nave,
To muse in a small chapel scarcely lit
By Cimabue's Virgin. Bright and brave,
That picture was accounted, mark, of old!
A king stood bare before its sovran grace;[2]
A reverent people shouted to behold
The picture, not the king; and even the place
Containing such a miracle, grew bold,
Named the Glad Borgo from that beauteous face,
Which thrilled the artist, after work, to think
- ↑ See his desription of the plague in Florence.
- ↑ Charles of Anjou, whom, in his passage through Florence, Olmabue allowed to see this picture while yet in his "Bottega." The populace followed the royal visitor, and in the universal delight and admiration, the quarter of the city In which the artist lived was called "Borgo Allegri." The picture was carried in a triumph to the church and deposited there.
