“Ah, lovely Florence! never city wore
So shining robes as I on thee bestowed:
For all the rapture of my being flowed
Around thy beauty, filling, flooding o’er
The banks of Arno and the circling hills,
With light no wind of sunset ever spills
From out its saffron seas! Once, and no more,
Life’s voyage touches the enchanted shore.”
During his stay in Florence, Bayard wrote a poem which so clearly expressed his affection for the maiden in Kennett, whom he afterwards married, that many have supposed the fictitious title, by which he addressed her, to be her real name. In that poem he thus referred to Florence:—
“Dear Lillian, all I wished is won!