LV.

   These are four minds, which, like the elements,
   Might furnish forth creation:  —­Italy! 
   Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand rents
   Of thine imperial garment, shall deny,
   And hath denied, to every other sky,
   Spirits which soar from ruin:  —­thy decay
   Is still impregnate with divinity,
   Which gilds it with revivifying ray;
Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day.

LVI.

   But where repose the all Etruscan three —
   Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they,
   The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he
   Of the Hundred Tales of love—­where did they lay
   Their bones, distinguished from our common clay
   In death as life?  Are they resolved to dust,
   And have their country’s marbles nought to say? 
   Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust? 
Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust?

LVII.

   Ungrateful Florence!  Dante sleeps afar,
   Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore;
   Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,
   Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore
   Their children’s children would in vain adore
   With the remorse of ages; and the crown
   Which Petrarch’s laureate brow supremely wore,
   Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,
His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled—­not thine own.

LVIII.

   Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed
   His dust,—­and lies it not her great among,
   With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed
   O’er him who formed the Tuscan’s siren tongue? 
   That music in itself, whose sounds are song,
   The poetry of speech?  No;—­even his tomb
   Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigots’ wrong,
   No more amidst the meaner dead find room,
Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom?

LIX.

   And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;
   Yet for this want more noted, as of yore
   The Caesar’s pageant, shorn of Brutus’ bust,
   Did but of Rome’s best son remind her more: 
   Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,
   Fortress of falling empire! honoured sleeps
   The immortal exile;—­Arqua, too, her store
   Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,
While Florence vainly begs her banished dead, and weeps.

LX.

   What is her pyramid of precious stones? 
   Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues
   Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones
   Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews
   Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse
   Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,
   Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse,
   Are gently prest with far more reverent tread
Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.