CAVALIERI. 
The sand beneath our feet is saturate
With blood of martyrs; and these rifted stones
Are awful witnesses against a people
Whose pleasure was the pain of dying men.

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
Tomaso Cavalieri, on my word,
You should have been a preacher, not a painter! 
Think you that I approve such cruelties,
Because I marvel at the architects
Who built these walls, and curved these noble arches? 
Oh, I am put to shame, when I consider
How mean our work is, when compared with theirs! 
Look at these walls about us and above us! 
They have been shaken by earthquake; have been made
A fortress, and been battered by long sieges;
The iron clamps, that held the stones together,
Have been wrenched from them; but they stand erect
And firm, as if they had been hewn and hollowed
Out of the solid rock, and were a part
Of the foundations of the world itself.

CAVALIERI. 
Your work, I say again, is nobler work,
In so far as its end and aim are nobler;
And this is but a ruin, like the rest. 
Its vaulted passages are made the caverns
Of robbers, and are haunted by the ghosts
Of murdered men.

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
            A thousand wild flowers bloom
From every chink, and the birds build their nests
Among the ruined arches, and suggest
New thoughts of beauty to the architect,
Now let us climb the broken stairs that lead
Into the corridors above, and study
The marvel and the mystery of that art
In which I am a pupil, not a master. 
All things must have an end; the world itself
Must have an end, as in a dream I saw it. 
There came a great hand out of heaven, and touched
The earth, and stopped it in its course.  The seas
Leaped, a vast cataract, into the abyss;
The forests and the fields slid off, and floated
Like wooded islands in the air.  The dead
Were hurled forth from their sepulchres; the living
Were mingled with them, and themselves were dead,—­
All being dead; and the fair, shining cities
Dropped out like jewels from a broken crown. 
Naught but the core of the great globe remained,
A skeleton of stone.  And over it
The wrack of matter drifted like a cloud,
And then recoiled upon itself, and fell
Back on the empty world, that with the weight
Reeled, staggered, righted, and then headlong plunged
Into the darkness, as a ship, when struck
By a great sea, throws off the waves at first
On either side, then settles and goes down
Into the dark abyss, with her dead crew.

CAVALIERI. 
But the earth does not move.

MICHAEL ANGELO. 
              Who knows? who knowst? 
There are great truths that pitch their shining tents
Outside our walls, and though but dimly seen
In the gray dawn, they will be manifest
When the light widens into perfect day. 
A certain man, Copernicus by name,
Sometime professor here in Rome, has whispered
It is the earth, and not the sun, that moves. 
What I beheld was only in a dream,
Yet dreams sometimes anticipate events,
Being unsubstantial images of things
As yet unseen.