Beneath

Such music as leaves Milan’s marble spires To mount towards a greater whiter throne, Or tempts to earth again seraphic choirs, Is at Augustine’s shrine unknown.

No wave of pilgrim footsteps surges here, No sheaf of tapers lifts its votive gleam, The half-taught critic comes not with his sneer, When I draw nigh, dear saint, to dream.

Enough if far-off sounds of children’s glee Bid me to “take and read” God’s open call, Or some sad Monnica pray here to see Her son, like thee, a second Paul.

p. 32XIX MODERN FLORENCE

p. 32

XIX

Hard by the home of Dante’s infant life I saw a Yankee “Kake Walk” advertised; Within San Miniato’s pillared aisle A Japanese was peering unsurprised; Where Michelangelo set “Dawn” and “Night,” And her, most blest, whose softly sculptured smile Glows with a maiden’s and a mother’s light, A German Jew was nagging with his wife.

Hard

p. 33XX TO DANTE

p. 33

XX

The Church divided and the Empire fell, Grave Dante, but thy verse in magic grows And charms men upward to the snow-white Rose Of heaven from the mire and grief of hell.

The

No lonely isle of dull forgetfulness Hides Beatrice within its shadowed gloom, For ’mid the petals of thy Rose’s bloom Time’s hand has set that pearl of loveliness.

Though patched and powdered poets could not taste Thy limpid sweetness, and exposed thy fame To meet the leering Frenchman’s cynic air,

Thy love was fair without brocade or paste, Thyself too great to need a gilded name; Thy Comedy and God survive Voltaire.

p. 34XXI TO PETRARCH

p. 34

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