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CLVIII.

[Where three huge dogs are ramping yonder]

Where three huge dogs are ramping yonder
Before that villa with its tower,
No braver boys, no father fonder,
Ever prolong'd the moonlight hour.
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Often, to watch their sports unseen,
Along the broad stone bench he lies,
The oleander-stems between
And citron-boughs to shade his eyes.
The clouds now whiten far away,
And villas glimmer thick below,
And windows catch the quivering ray,
Obscure one minute's space ago.
Orchards and vine-knolls maple-propt
Rise radiant round: the meads are dim,
As if the milky-way had dropt
And fill'd Valdarno to the brim.
Unseen beneath us, on the right,
The abbey with unfinisht front
Of checker'd marble, black and white,
And on the left the Doccia's font.
Eastward, two ruin'd castles rise
Beyond Maiano's mossy mill,
Winter and Time their enemies,
Without their warder, stately still.
The heaps around them there will grow
Higher, as years sweep by, and higher,
Till every battlement laid low
Is seized and trampled by the briar.
That line so lucid is the weir
Of Rovezzano: but behold
The graceful tower of Giotto there,
And Duomo's cross of freshen'd gold.
We can not tell, so far away,
Whether the city's tongue be mute,
We only hear some lover play
(If sighs be play) the sighing flute.
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