With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?)Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion, Where in the foreground kneels the donor?
If such remain, as is my conviction, The hoarding it does you but little honour.
XXIX.
They pass; for them the panels may thrill, The tempera grow alive and tinglish;Their pictures are left to the mercies still Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English, Who, seeing mere money's worth in their prize, Will sell it to somebody calm as Zeno At naked High Art, and in ecstasies Before some clay-cold vile Carlino!
XXX.
No matter for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it,---Oh, never! it shall not be counted true---That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover,---Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! and to whom?---to whom?
XXXI.
I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito, (Or was it rather the Ognissanti<*10>?)Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe!
Nay, I shall have it yet! _Detur amanti!_
My Koh-i-noor-or (if that's a platitude)
Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi's eye So, in anticipative gratitude, What if I take up my hope and prophesy?
XXXII.
When the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing, To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard, We shall begin by way of rejoicing;None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge), Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer, Hunting Radetzky's soul like a partridge Over Morello with squib and cracker.
XXXIII.
This time we'll shoot better game and bag 'em hot---No mere display at the stone of Dante, But a kind of sober Witanagemot (Ex: ``Casa Guidi,'' _quod videas ante_)Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence, How Art may return that departed with her.
Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine's, And bring us the days of Orgagna<*11> hither!
XXXIV.
How we shall prologize, how we shall perorate, Utter fit things upon art and history, Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero rate, Make of the want of the age no mystery;Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras, Show---monarchy ever its uncouth cub licks Out of the bear's shape into Chim<ae>ra's, While Pure Art's birth is still the republic's.
XXXV.
Then one shall propose in a speech (curt Tuscan, Expurgate and sober, with scarcely an ``_issimo,_'')To end now our half-told tale of Cambuscan,<*12>
And turn the bell-tower's _alt_ to _altissimo_:
And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia<*13>
The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally, Shall soar up in gold full fifty braccia, Completing Florence, as Florence Italy.
XXXVI.
Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold Is broken away, and the long-pent fire, Like the golden hope of the world, unbaffled Springs from its sleep, and up goes the spire While ``God and the People'' plain for its motto, Thence the new tricolour flaps at the sky?
At least to foresee that glory of Giotto And Florence together, the first am I!
* 1 A sculptor, died 1278.
* 2 Died 1455. Designed the bronze gates of the Baptistry at Florence.
* 3 A painter, died 1498.
* 4 The son of Fr<a`> Lippo Lippi. Wronged, because some of his * pictures have been attributed to others.
* 5 Died 1366. One of Giotto's pupils and assistants.
* 6 Rough cast.
* 7 Painter, sculptor, and goldsmith.
* 8 Distemper---mixture of water and egg yolk.
* 9 Sculptor and architect, died 1313-
*10 All Saints.
*11 A Florentine painter, died 1576.
*12 Tartar king.
*13 A woodcock
