"Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow."
The lines were written at Avignon, surely the place of all others, with its memories and its mediæval atmosphere, to inspire a poem, the dignity and beauty of which are largely due to the simplicity of its wording.
During this period of travel we are struck by two things. Firstly, how deeply impressed the young poet was by the mysteries of the Catholic Faith and how his indignation flamed up at the new Italian régime; secondly, how apparent the influence of Rossetti is in the sonnets he then wrote.
His sympathies were all with the occupant of St Peter's chair.
"But when I knew that far away at Rome
In evil bonds a second Peter lay,
I wept to see the land so very fair."
"Look southward where Rome's desecrated town
Lies mourning for her God-anointed King!
Look heavenward! Shall God allow this thing
Not but some flame-girt Raphael shall come down,
And smite the Spoiler with the sword of pain."
In "San Miniato" the influence of Rome upon the young man's mind finds expression in words which might have been written by a son of the Latin Church.
"O crowned by God with thorns and pain!
Mother of Christ! O mystic wife!
My heart is weary of this life
And over sad to sing again,"
he writes, and ends with the invocation—