 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere
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XV.
THE CAMPO SANTO AT PISA.—1.
There needs not choral song, nor organs 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 caughtup, 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
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