That heavenliest and most high

Time hath seen live and die,

Poured all their power upon him to retrace

The erased immortal roll

Of Love's most sovereign scroll

And Wisdom's warm from Freedom's wide embrace,

The scroll that on Aspasia's knees

Laid once made manifest the Olympian Pericles.

38.

Clothed on with tenderest weft of Tuscan air,

Came laughing like Etrurian spring the third,

With green Valdelsa's hill-flowers in her hair

Deep-drenched with May-dews, in her voice the bird

Whose voice hath night and morning in it; fair

As the ambient gold of wall-flowers that engird

The walls engirdling with a circling stair

My sweet San Gimignano: nor a word

Fell from her flowerlike mouth

Not sweet with all the south;

As though the dust shrined in Certaldo stirred

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