Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/194

188 The lava of his spirit when it burned— It is not cold to-day. O passionate Poor Dante, who, a banished Florentine, Didst sit austere at banquets of the great, And muse upon this far-off stone of thine, And think how oft the passers used to wait A moment, in the golden day's decline, With "good night, dearest Dante!"—Well, good night! I muse now, Dante, and think, verily, Though chapelled in Ravenna's byeway, might Thy buried bones be thrilled to ecstasy, Could'st know thy favourite stone's elected right As tryst-place for thy Tuscans to foresee Their earliest chartas from! good night, good morn, Henceforward, Dante! now my soul is sure That thine is better comforted of scorn, And looks down from the stars in fuller cure, Than when, in Santa Croce church, forlorn Of any corpse, the architect and hewer Did pile the empty marbles as thy tomb! For now thou art no longer exiled, now Best honoured!-we salute thee who art come Back to the old stone with a softer brow Than Giotto drew upon the wall, for some Good lovers of our age to track and plough Their way to, through Time's ordures stratified, And startle broad awake into the dull Bargello chamber. Now, thou'rt milder eyed,