After Reading Trollope's History Of Florence

My books are on their shelves again     And clouds lie low with mist and rain.     Afar the Arno murmurs low     The tale of fields of melting snow.     List to the bells of times agone     The while I wait me for the dawn.     Beneath great Giotto's Campanile     The gray ghosts throng; their whispers steal     From poets' bosoms long since dust;     They ask me now to go. I trust     Their fleeter footsteps where again     They come at night and live as men.     The rain falls on Ghiberti's gates;     The big drops hang on purple dates;     And yet beneath the ilex-shades--     Dear trysting-place for boys and maids--     There comes a form from days of old,     With Beatrice's hair of gold.     The breath of lands or lilied streams     Floats through the fabric of my dreams;     And yonder from the hills of song,     Where psalmists brood and prophets throng,     The lone, majestic Dante leads     His love across the blooming meads.     Along the almond walks I tread     And greet the figures of the dead.     Mirandula walks here with him     Who lived with gods and seraphim;     Yet where Colonna's fair feet go     There passes Michael Angelo.     In Rome or Florence, still with her     Stands lone and grand her worshipper.     In Leonardo's brain there move     Christ and the children of His love;     And Raphael is touching now,     For the last time, an angel's brow.     Angelico is praying yet     Where lives no pang of man's regret,     And, mixing tears and prayers within     His palette's wealth, absolved from sin,     He dips his brush in hues divine;     San Marco's angel faces shine.     Within Lorenzo's garden green,     Where olives hide their boughs between,     The lovers, as they read betimes     Their love within Petrarca's lines,     Stand near the marbles found at Rome,     Lost shades that search in vain for home.     They pace the paths along the stream,     Dark Vallombrosa in their dream.     They sing, amidst the rain-drenched pines,     Of Tuscan gold that ruddier shines     Behind a saint's auroral face     That shows e'en yet the master's trace.     But lo, within the walls of gray,     E're yet there falls a glint of day,     And far without, from hill to vale,     Where honey-hearted nightingale     Or meads of pale anemones     Make sweet the coming morning breeze--     I hear a voice, of prophet tone,     A voice of doom, like his alone     That once in Gadara was heard;     The old walls trembled--lo, the bird     Has ceased to sing, and yonder waits     Lorenzo at his palace gates.     Some Romola in passing by     Turns toward the ruler, and his sigh     Wanders amidst the myrtle bowers     Or o'er the city's mantled towers,     For she is Florence! "Wilt thou hear     San Marco's prophet? Doom is near."     "Her liberties," he cries, "restore!     This much for Florence--yea, and more     To men and God!" The days are gone;     And in an hour of perfect dawn     I stand beneath the cypress trees     That shiver still with words like these.