Folks will fall in with ’em after a time, jest as they fell in with the idees of Galileo; now they persecute ’em.
But more interestin’ to me than the glories and marvels of the Medician Chapel, the Pitti and Uffizi galleries, the Boboli Gardens, the monument to Dante (smart creeter he wuz, and went through a sight from first to last; he and she both—Beatrice, I mean)—
But of fur more interest to me it wuz to stand in the house where the slender little English woman dwelt while her soul was slightly imprisoned in her frail body, while she held “The poet’s star-tuned harp to sweep.” And where at last “God struck a silence through it all, and gave to His beloved sleep.”
“Sleep, sweet belovéd, we sometimes say,
Yet have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep;
But never doleful dream again
Shall break their happy slumber when
He giveth His belovéd sleep.”
Yes, she sleeps well now. All the melancholy and charm of Italy, all its magnificence, all of its splendor, its ruins—all seem to be centred in that one little room. I had emotions there that it hain’t no use dwellin’ on.