Feda with Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Then they went Southward slowly,—lingering long,
Through old-world towns whose each name is a song,
Those sweet old towns of story, where they stand
Tower-crowned and silent in their slumber-land;
How rest they now after the stormy years,
How weep at leisure long-owed mother tears!

The fissures widen in these yellow walls
Close-leaning, where no sun-light ever falls,
And the roofs over-lap; only out there
A Campanile bleaches in the glare
Of noon-tide, and the very doves fly down
Into the shaded side. Ah, grey old town,
How tired art thou, how effortless! The weed
Fringes thy paving boulders, and, indeed,
Thou art more ghostly than the ghosts that walk
Thy shadowy porches yonder,—though their talk
Wakes never an echo in the silent street

With the last word from Florence, or how the fleet
Came back to Pisa from the warring East,—
Or what they plan in yonder little nest
Sparkling in sun-floods on the last blue crest,
To fire the youngest of thy hero-brood,
And fret the edges of the ancient feud.

Yet these are phantoms with the streaming hair
Under the grey steel helmet, clustering there,
Ringing the crimson banner, and thine eyes
Dream, for the air is quick with memories.

They will not march through the wide gate again
For any feud or foray, nor shall strain
Of battle-chorus echo down thy dells,
Nor evermore the clang of those loud bells
Proclaim Madonna watching from the wall;
Ah fallen, fallen, yet loveliest in thy fall,
Throned o'er the hills, like a forsaken queen!

Only the mules in yon dark shadow lean,
And a monk mutters somewhat down the street,

Only a sudden rush of children's feet
Vexes thy slumber, or the homeward song
Of labouring folk at eve.

All August long
They wandered through the cities of romance,
To soft Siena in her ageless trance,
Arezzo citadelled with corn and flowers,
And Santa Fina's mountain crown of towers,
Cortona's, Chiusi's Tuscan graves, and down
The Arno valley to the silent town
Where voices wane to whispers, lest one sound
Should mar the quiet of that burial ground
Where rest her great forgotten. Such a sleep
As theirs is, one might envy, could we keep
That sense of sweet surrounding, laid beneath
In such an Earthly Paradise of death;
The heart of Pisa seems to slumber here
Safe in the frescoed cloister, and in ear
Of faint sea-winds that nod the cypress tree.

There is a time for places—you should see
Rome first at day-dawn, Naples at late noon,
And Venice in the full spring's golden moon,
But Florence first at sunset; so he deemed
Who knew them at all seasons.
Yet it seemed
The noon was long in Prato to delay,
When Florence was but such a little way,
For all Fra Lippo's frescoes in the dim
Old choir, and Donatello's marble hymn
Of singing children,—ever till the chime
Rang on toward even, asking “Is it time?”
“And is it really Florence,” she would say,
“Home to my Florence that we go to-day?”
“And are we really on the road at last?”
While vineyard hills and villages fled past;—
And then the throb of joy to be indeed
In her own city of the lily-mead,
Where still among the palace piles and shrines
And hurry and din of laughter, one divines
The scent of lilies in the evening air,
Hears yet the lute-strings ring across the square

Of nobles, to full Tuscan tones that reach
Nearer the heart than any earthly speech.

The world is sunset's,—one first frightened star
Shows over ancient Fiesoli, and far
As eye may follow down the crimson west,
A golden river winds away to rest
Among the ruby mountains. 'Tis the hour
Of Ave, and each stone in Giotto's Tower
Shows a more perfect jewel,—while the doves
Fly to their roosting, and a voice like Love's
Whispers across the silence; down the stream
That shaft of flame that is the last day-gleam
Wanes, lingers, dies; the parting orb that kissed
Yon mountain edges draws a purple mist
Over dark cypress clusters and the wood,
Fringing the silvered marges, red as blood
Those clouds are still that see Him overhead;
A boat is drifting down the river-bed,—
Again the lute strings and the plaintive air,—

Yonder's the tower of Carmine, and there
San Miniato on the twilight hill.

All this makes Florence: so she had her will.