The burdened barges trust the smiling flood,
Calm wraps the distance of reclining dunes,
The tower rings peace in soft alternate tones.
And who that hears the bells’ low luting tunes,
Now thinks of Haarlem’s siege and starving moans,
Or how these brooks once bubbled with brave blood?
XVIII
THE TOMB OF ST. AUGUSTINE AT PAVIA
Beneath the low barbaric Lombard apse
It rises like a ridge of Alpine snow,
And wry-wheeled ages with uneasy lapse
Creak past its majesty, and go.
Such music as leaves Milan’s marble spires
To mount towards a greater whiter throne,
Or tempts to earth again seraphic choirs,
Is at Augustine’s shrine unknown.
No wave of pilgrim footsteps surges here,
No sheaf of tapers lifts its votive gleam,
The half-taught critic comes not with his sneer,
When I draw nigh, dear saint, to dream.
Enough if far-off sounds of children’s glee
Bid me to “take and read” God’s open call,
Or some sad Monnica pray here to see
Her son, like thee, a second Paul.
XIX
MODERN FLORENCE
Hard by the home of Dante’s infant life
I saw a Yankee “Kake Walk” advertised;
Within San Miniato’s pillared aisle
A Japanese was peering unsurprised;
Where Michelangelo set “Dawn” and “Night,”
And her, most blest, whose softly sculptured smile
Glows with a maiden’s and a mother’s light,
A German Jew was nagging with his wife.