Page:Florence Earle Coates Poems 1898 66.jpg

 An art too heavenly to perish:

A beauty, born of passion pure,

That shall endure!"

So spoke he; and now lies asleep,

While near him forms angelic keep

Unwearied watch, and from decay

Guard him alway:

Rare, sculptured forms that blend his story

With Donatello's deathless glory,

And make mankind his debtors be

Eternally.

For lordly castles, as he said,

Have crumbled; ay, and bastions dread,

And temples grave and gardens gay

Become as they.

Each vaunted image of his power

Has perished like a wayside flower,

But living in the art he fed,

He is not dead!