White in marble, cold in air!—
To those priestly fingers there,
Lifted o'er the peopled square,
A purple pigeon sudden flits,
Lightly 'lights and lingering sits.
By the Baptistery gates,
Where I stand, I can but smile,
Thinking that the potentate's
Lips are curving, too, the while;
And I wonder what the bird
Said that Papa, smiling, heard.
MICHAEL ANGELO'S AURORA
THE MEDICI CHAPEL, FLORENCE
O majesty and loveliness in one!
Why art thou sorrowful, now night is done?
This is the dawn; why doth thy spirit quake?
O thou who wakenest! is it pain to wake?
THE OLD MASTER
Of his dear Lord he painted all the life,
But not that ancient land, nor the old days;
Not curious he to seek, through learnèd strife,
The look of those far times and unknown ways.
But in his solemn and long-living art
Well did he paint that which can never die:
The life and passion of the human heart,
Unchanged while sorrowing age on age goes by.
Beneath his brush his own loved people grew,
Their rivers and their mountains, saints and lords;
The dark Italian mothers whom he knew,
