University of Virginia Library

Sonnets on Mediæval Science and Art.

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS.

GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE AT FLORENCE.

Enchased with precious marbles pure and rare
How gracefully it soars and seems the while
From every polished stage to laugh and smile
Playing with gleams of that clear southern air!
Fit resting-place methinks that summit were
For a descended Angel! happy isle
Mid life's rough sea of sorrow force and guile
For Saint of royal race or vestal fair
In this seclusion—call it not a prison—
Cloistering a bosom innocent and lonely.
O Tuscan Priestess! gladly would I watch
All night one note of thy loud hymn to catch
Sent forth to greet the sun when first, new-risen,
He shines on that aërial station only!

OLD PICTURES AT FLORENCE.

Thrice happy they who thus before man's eyes
Restored the placid image of his prime;
Illustrating th' abortive shows of Time
With gleams authentic caught from Paradise.
Those Godlike forms are men! Impure disguise
By Man now suffered! O for wings to climb
Once more to Virtue's mountain seats sublime
And be what here we poorly recognize!
From these fair pictures our Humanity
Looks down upon us kindly. 'Tis no dream:—
Truth stands attested by Consistency;
Here all the Virtues meet in peace supreme
So meet, so blend, that in those Forms we see
The sum of all we are and fain would be.

ON A PICTURE BY COREGGIO AT PARMA.

Paint thou the pearl gates of the Morning Star
Loftiest of Painters and the loveliest
For only of thy pencil worthy are
Those ever-smiling mansions of the blest!
Thyself when homeward summoned to thy rest
Couldst scarce have marked our earth's receding bar:
No happier shapes could greet thee near or far
Than oft in life thy radiant fancy drest.
God when He framed the earth beheld it good;
That light from His approving smile that shone
For thee waned never from her features wan:
Before thine eyes—unfallen if unrenewed—
Still moved that Race supreme and fairest made;
And Love and Joy, twin stars, still on their foreheads played.

COREGGIO'S CUPOLAS AT PARMA.

Creatures all eyes and brows and tresses streaming
By speed divine blown back:—within, all fire
Of wondering zeal and storm of bright desire;
Round the broad dome the immortal throngs are beaming:
With elemental Powers that vault is teeming:
We gaze, and, gazing, join yon fervid choir
In spirit launched on wings that ne'er can tire
Like those that buoy the breasts of children dreaming.
The exquisitest hand that e'er in light
Revealed the subtlest smile of new-born pleasure
Here sounds the abysses and attains the height,
Is strong the strength of heavenly hosts to measure
Draws back the azure curtain of the skies
And antedates our promised Paradise.

A PICTURE BY PIETRO PERUGINO.

Glory to God of all fair things the maker
For that He dwelleth in the mind of Man!
Glory to Man of that large grace partaker
For that he storeth thus his spirit's span
With shapes our earth creates not, neither can
Till like a flood her youth shall overtake her,
And voices new to loftier labours wake her
High artist then, as now poor artizan.
Mark, mark those awful sons of martyrdom
With their uplifted hands but eyes down-cast
As though the uncreated light had dazed them:—
The error of our brief existence past
They stand like Saints resurgent from the tomb,
Suspended still on that great Voice which raised them!

FRESCOES BY MASACCIO.

Well hast thou judged that sentence ‘Had ye Faith
Ye could move mountains.’ In those forms I see
What God at first ordained that Man should be,
His Image crowned triumphant over death.
Born of that Word which never perisheth
Those Prophets here resume the empery
Of old in Eden lost. Their eye, their breath
Cancels disease, lays prone the anarchy
Of Passion's fiercest waves. Secret as Fate
Like Fate's the powers they wield are infinite:
Their very thoughts are laws: their will is weight—
On as they move in majesty and might
The demons yield their prey, the graves their dead:
And to her centre Earth is conscious of their tread.

A TYROLESE VILLAGE.

This village, thronged with churches, needeth none:
Each house like some old missal rich and quaint
Is blazoned o'er with prophet, seer, and saint:
Each court a separate sanctity hath won.
Here a great Angel stands crowned with the sun:
Magdalene there pours her perpetual plaint:
There o'er her child the Maiden without taint
Bends—as His mercy bends o'er worlds undone.
Of earth's proud centres none like this recalls
That mystic City in the realms supernal
Built upon God, whose light is God alone;
The very stones cry out: the eloquent walls
Plainly confess that Name the proud disown;
The Father's glory and the Son Eternal.

AN EARLY PICTURE BY RAFFAEL.

Dark, infinitely dark, a midnight blue
Those orbs that, resting on the skies, appear
To pierce the veil of Heaven and wander through
Searching the centre of the starry sphere:
Angels, be sure, unseen are hovering near!
Their fanning plumes with faintest blush imbue
That pearly cheek, a lily else in hue,
And from that brow the auburn tresses clear.
One hand is laid upon her mantled breast
To us an unrevealed paradise,
Nor bodied in the ascetic Painter's dream—
Hidden it lies in everlasting rest
Beneath those purple robes that earthward stream
Cyphered with star-emblazoned mysteries.

BOCCACCIO AND CERTALDO.

The world's blind pilgrims tendering praise for blame,
Passing Certaldo, point and smile and stare
And with Boccaccio's triumph din the air:—
Ah, but for him how high had soared thy fame
Italian Song! False Pleasure is a flame
That brands the Muses' pleasaunce; burns it bare
As some volcanic isle with barren glare:
O Italy! exult not in thy shame!
'Twas here, 'twas here thy Song's crystalline river
Lost its last sight of hoar Parnassus' head
And swerved through flowery meads to sandy bar:
Its saintly mission here it spurned for ever:
It sighed to Laura, and with Tancred bled
But caught no second flash from Dante's star!

I. THE CAMPO SANTO AT PISA.

There needs not choral song nor organ's pealing:—
This mighty cloister of itself inspires
Thoughts breathed like hymns from spiritual choirs
While shades and lights in soft succession stealing
Along it creep, now veiling now revealing
Strange forms here traced by Painting's earliest sires,
Angels with palms and purgatorial fires
And Saints caught up and demons round them reeling.
Love, long remembering those she could not save
Here hung the cradle of Italian Art:
Faith rocked it: hence, like hermit child, went forth
That heaven-born Power which beautified the earth:
She perished when the world had lured her heart
From her true friends, Religion and the grave.

II. THE CAMPO SANTO AT PISA.

Lament not thou: the cold winds as they pass
Through the ribbed fret-work with low sigh or moan
Lament enough; let them lament alone
Counting the sear leaves of the innumerous grass
With thin, soft sound like one prolonged alas!
Spread thou thy hands on sun-touched vase or stone
That yet retains the warmth of sunshine gone,
And drink warm solace from that ponderous mass.
Gaze not around thee. Monumental marbles
Time-clouded frescoes mouldering year by year
Dim cells in which all day the night-bird warbles—
These things are sorrowful elsewhere not here:
A mightier Power than Art's hath here her shrine:
Stranger! thou tread'st the soil of Palestine!