XLIX.

   There, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills
   The air around with beauty; we inhale
   The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils
   Part of its immortality; the veil
   Of heaven is half undrawn; within the pale
   We stand, and in that form and face behold
   What Mind can make, when Nature’s self would fail;
   And to the fond idolaters of old
Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould: 

L.

   We gaze and turn away, and know not where,
   Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart
   Reels with its fulness; there—­for ever there —
   Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art,
   We stand as captives, and would not depart. 
   Away!—­there need no words, nor terms precise,
   The paltry jargon of the marble mart,
   Where Pedantry gulls Folly—­we have eyes: 
Blood, pulse, and breast, confirm the Dardan Shepherd’s prize.

LI.

   Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise? 
   Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or,
   In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies
   Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War? 
   And gazing in thy face as toward a star,
   Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn,
   Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are
   With lava kisses melting while they burn,
Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn!

LII.

   Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love,
   Their full divinity inadequate
   That feeling to express, or to improve,
   The gods become as mortals, and man’s fate
   Has moments like their brightest! but the weight
   Of earth recoils upon us;—­let it go! 
   We can recall such visions, and create
   From what has been, or might be, things which grow,
Into thy statue’s form, and look like gods below.

LIII.

   I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands,
   The artist and his ape, to teach and tell
   How well his connoisseurship understands
   The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell: 
   Let these describe the undescribable: 
   I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream
   Wherein that image shall for ever dwell;
   The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream
That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam.

LIV.

   In Santa Croce’s holy precincts lie
   Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
   E’en in itself an immortality,
   Though there were nothing save the past, and this
   The particle of those sublimities
   Which have relapsed to chaos:  —­here repose
   Angelo’s, Alfieri’s bones, and his,
   The starry Galileo, with his woes;
Here Machiavelli’s earth returned to whence it rose.