Classic Poem

Soon, the lady seemed to waken in that land of classic beauty;
Now and then her pale face brightened with the semblance of a smile,
Was she better, or but feigning, from a sense of filial duty,
To dispel her father's sadness with a little, loving wile?

But she took unlooked-for interest in the charming world around her;
Stronger life, unwonted vigor, stirred the pulses of her heart;
There, perchance, was some sweet sympathy between the tie that bound her
To her distant artist lover and that home of living art.

She went daily to the palaces, enriched through many ages,
With the dreams of genius glorified, enshrined by art sublime:
Dreamed where dreamed the grand old masters, sculptors, painters, poets, sages,
Whose voices are still ringing down the shadowy paths of time.

To the consecrate Duomo she went often, rapt, admiring
Its grand frescoes, rare mosaics, statues, many-colored glooms;
And her soul grew larger, loftier, with a sense of its aspiring,
As she read the names engraven on the marble of its tombs.

“They sleep well,” she said, “these masters of the pencil, lyre and chisel;
They sleep well beneath these monuments, since all their work is done;
They have laid aside forever model, measure, pen and easel,
Bequeathing Time the legacy their life-long labor won.

Oh, that I were poor and humble, or that he had gold and station!
Yet, the dust of these immortals was as humbly born as he;
Not to kingly grace or favor did they owe their elevation!
Nay, the lordship of their genius won their right of patentee.

Strolled she in the Pitti gardens, 'round bright lakelets dimpled over
By the odorous winds that drifted down the snows of orange flowers;
There the beauty, all forgetting, sweet, fond thoughts of her one lover
Went like angels pure with noiseless feet adown the long, bright hours.

But, among the first and fairest, in that pleasure-loving city,
In the festive halls of palaces, her's was the queenliest tread;
For she scorned to crave the sympathy that moves the heart to pity,
And she smiled to others' smiling, scarcely hearing what they said.

To fair, rural Miniato, regnant in its beauty doric;
To the tower where Galileo long watched nightly glow and gleam;
To Fiesole's Etruscan wall, and ruined shrines historic,
She went, like one clairvoyant, like one walking in a dream.

But her lip and cheek grew paler, and her sweet voice sadder, lower;
Then she rarely left her chamber, as the weary weeks went by—
And still she failed and faded, still her steps grew feebler, slower,
Till her father's heart, despairing, gave its idol up to die.