Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/184

178 That Miriam dashed her cymbals to surprise The sun between her white arms flung apart, With new, glad, golden sounds? that David's strings O'erflowed his hand with music from his heart? So harmony grows full from many springs, And happy accident turns holy art.

Or enter, in your Florence wanderings, Santa Maria Novella church. You pass The left stair, where, at plague-time, Macchiavel Saw one with set fair face as in a glass, Dressed out against the fear of death and hell, Rustling her silks in pauses of the mass, To keep the thought off how her husband fell, When she left home, stark dead across her feet— The stair leads up to what Orgagna gave Of Dante's dæmons; but you, passing it, Ascend the right stair of the farther nave, To muse in a small chapel scarcely lit By Cimabue's Virgin. Bright and brave, That picture was accounted, mark, of old! A king stood bare before its sovran grace; A reverent people shouted to behold The picture, not the king; and even the place Containing such a miracle, grew bold, Named the Glad Borgo from that beauteous face, Which thrilled the artist, after work, to think