 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
406
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.
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |