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2
A Masque of Dead Florentines
Yet we count us happier
Than are they whose keener star
Shone about them while they stayed
Here with us; and when they strayed
Forbore Death their names to hide:
We are they who quietly died.
ii
Invocation of the great ones.
Here begins that crimson line,
Greater none, nor more divine.
By thy grimness of achieving,
By the scope of thy conceiving,
God-creative, Heaven-cleaving,
Alighieri! lift thy head
From among the sheeted dead.
Buonarroti! God is just;
Come thou too to close the trust:
Tell the story
How the glory
Of thy burgh was pash'd in dust.
