The Borgo Ognissanti leads hence westward into the Via del Prato, and through the Porta al Prato, one of the four gates of the third wall of the city, begun by Arnolfo in 1284; now merely a mutilated torso of Arnolfo's stately structure, left stranded in the prosaic wilderness of the modern Viale. The fresco in the lunette is by Michele di Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. Down towards the Arno a single tower remains from the old walls, mutilated, solitary and degraded so as to look a mere modern bit of masonry.
Beyond are the Cascine Gardens, stretching for some two miles between the Arno and the Mugnone, delicious to linger in, and a sacred place to all lovers of English poetry. For here, towards the close of 1819, "in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains," Shelley wrote the divinest of all English lyrics: the Ode to the West Wind.
"Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"
