down, 110 To comfort me on my entablature Whereon I am to lie till I must ask "Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there! For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude To death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone— Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat As if the corpse they keep were oozing through— And no more lapis to delight the world! Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there, But in a row: and, going, turn your backs 120 —Ay, like departing altar-ministrants, And leave me in my church, the church for peace, That I may watch at leisure if he leers— Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone, As still he envied me, so fair she was! NOTES "The Bishop orders his Tomb" This half-delirious pleading of the dying prelate for a tomb which shall gratify his luxurious artistic tastes and personal rivalries, presents dramatically not merely the special scene of the worldly old bishop's petulant struggle against his failing power, and his collapse, finally, beneath the will of his so-called nephews, it also illustrates a characteristic gross form of the Renaissance spirit encumbered with Pagan survivals, fleshly appetites, and selfish monopolizings which hampered its development.— "It is nearly all that I said of the Central Renaissance—its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin—in thirty pages of the 'Stones of Venice,' put into as many lines, Browning's being also the antecedent work" (Ruskin). The Church of St.Praxed is notable for the beauty of its stone-work and mosaics, one of its chapels being so extraordinarily rich that it was called [Orto del Paradiso], or the Garden of Paradise; and so, although the bishop and his tomb there are imaginary, it supplies an appropriate setting for the poetic scene. 1. Vanity, saith the preacher: Ecclesiastes 1.2. 21. Epistle-side: the right-hand side facing the altar, where the epistle is read by the priest acting as celebrant, the gospel being read from the other side by the priest acting as assistant. 25. Basalt: trap-rock, leaden or black in color. 31. Onion stone: for the Italian [cipollino], a kind of greenish-white marble splitting into coats like an onion, [cipolla]; hence so called. 41. Olive-frail: a basket made of rushes, used for packing olives. 42. Lapis lazuli: a bright blue stone. 46. Frascati: near Rome, on the Alban hills. 48. God the Father's globe: in the group of the Trinity adorning the altar of Saint Ignatius at the church of Il Gesu in
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