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Alfred Austin - Florence
Work rating: Low

City acclaimed from far—off days
 Fair, and baptized in field of flowers,
 Once more I scan, with eager gaze,
 Your soaring domes, your storied towers.

 Nigh on eight lustres now have flown
 Since first with trembling heart I came,
 And, girdled by your mountain zone,
 Found you yet fairer than your fame.

 It was the season purple—sweet,
 When figs are plucked, and grapes are pressed,
 And all your folk with following feet
 Bore a dead Poet to sacred rest.

 You seemed to fling your gates ajar,
 And gently lead me by the hand,
 Saying, ``Behold! henceforth you are
 No stranger in this Tuscan land.``

 And though no love my love can wean
 From Albion`s crags and cradling sea,
 You, Florence, since that hour, have been
 More than a foster—nurse to me.

 And seems that welcome half profaned,
 If, in your lap lain oft and long,
 I cherish to have something drained
 Of Dante`s soul and Petrarch`s song?

 But more than even Muse can give,
 Is Love, which, songless though we be,
 While the unloving jarring live,
 Makes life one long sweet melody.

 And you with love and friendship still
 Have teemed, as teem your hills with wine,
 And, through the seasons good or ill,
 Have made their mellow vintage mine.

 But most, while Fancy yet was young,
 Yet timely cared no more to roam,
 You lent your tender Tuscan tongue
 To help me in my English home.

 So now from soft Sicilian shore,
 And Tiber`s sterner tide, I bring
 My Autumn sheaves, to share once more
 The rapture of your rainbow Spring.

 I, lingering in your palaced town,
 Asudden, `neath some beetling pile,
 Catch sight of Dante`s awful frown,
 Or Vinci`s enigmatic smile;

 Then, following olden footsteps, stroll
 To where, from May—day`s mocking pyre,
 Savonarola`s tortured soul
 Went up to Heaven in tongues of fire;

 Or Buonarroti`s godlike hand
 Made marble block from Massa`s steep
 Dawn into Day at his command,
 Or plunged it into Night and Sleep.

 Onward I pass through radiant squares,
 And widening ways whose foliage shames
 Our leafless streets, to one that bears
 The best—beloved of English names,

 And climb the white—veiled slopes arrayed
 In bridal bloom of peach and pear,
 While, `neath the olive`s phantom shade,
 Lupine and beanflower scent the air.

 The wild—bees hum round golden bay,
 The green frog sings on fig—tree bole,
 And, see! down daisy—whitened way
 Come the slow steers and swaying pole.

 The fresh—pruned vine—stems, curving, bend
 Over the peaceful wheaten spears,
 And with the glittering sunshine blend
 Their transitory April tears.

 O`er wall and trellis trailed and wound,
 Hang roses blushing, roses pale;
 And, hark! what was that silvery sound?
 The first note of the nightingale.

 Curtained, I close my lids and dream
 Of Beauty seen not but surmised,
 And, lulled by scent and song, I seem
 Immortally imparadised.

 When from the deep sweet swoon I wake
 And gaze past slopes of grape and grain,
 Where Arno, like some lonely lake,
 Silvers the far—off seaward plain,

 I see celestial sunset fires
 That lift us from this earthly leaven,
 And darkly silent cypress spires
 Pointing the way from hill to Heaven.

 Then something more than mortal steals
 Over the wavering twilight air,
 And, messenger of nightfall, peals
 From each crowned peak a call to prayer.

 And now the last meek prayer is said,
 And, in the hallowed hush, there is
 Only a starry dome o`erhead,
 Propped by columnar cypresses.
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