A pageant of poets and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

My Medals see—perchance, to-morrow, thine—
Long wrapped in silk or choked in travertine:—
Of Malatesta from his robber lair,
And sly Isotta with the coif-bound hair,
And many a Ferrarese and Florentine.

Princes and Popes of Medicean line,
And treacherous Borgias, deft with poisoned wine:
Sixtus and bull-necked Julius, born Rovere:
My Medals—See!

Visconti, with the viper for their sign
And fierce Colonnas, lords of Palestrine;
Estes and Gonzagas, proud but debonnair;
And women roped with pearls or robed in vair,—
Children of days malignant yet divine,
Deaf to all days of triumph and despair,—
But sometimes, gazing out through storm and shine,
My Medals see.

(2)

What have Ye seen?—Rome's sack and overthrow,
Thou, Clement, crouching in Saint Angelo.
Thee, Clement, later, foremost in the race,
Florence, thy fortune's cradle, to efface.
Unbridled wills, immeasurable woe.

Borgia, who tossed thy son to Tiber-flow?
Wert thou at Sinigaglia, first to know
When smooth Cæsare played his sovereign ace?
What have ye seen?

Phantasmal States that shrivel while they grow;
Renaissance and reaction,—spasm and throe
Of birth and death that clutch and interlace;
Pontiffs and Kings that pass in spectral chase;
Spaniard and Frank and Austrian come and go;
Out of the Alpine war-clouds bursting low
The new Italia risen into their place:—
These have Ye seen!