Thus they in verse alternate sang the year For rabbit shy and listless ewe to hear, Among the grey rocks on the mountain green Beneath the sky in fair and pastoral scene, Like those Sicilian swains, whose doric tongue After two thousand years is ever young,— _Sweet the pine’s murmur, and, shepherd, sweet thy pipe_,— Or that which gentle Virgil, yet unripe, Of Tityrus sang under the spreading beech And gave to rustic clowns immortal speech, By rocky fountain or on flowery mead Bidding their idle flocks at will to feed, While they, retreated to some bosky glade, Together told their loves, and as they played Sang what sweet thing soe’er the poet feigned: But these were men when good Victoria reigned, Poets themselves, who without shepherd gear Each of his native fancy sang the year. ECLOGUE II GIOVANNI DUPRÈ _LAWRENCE AND RICHARD_ _LAWRENCE_ Look down the river—against the western sky— The Ponte Santa Trinità—what throng Slowly trails o’er with waving banners high, With foot and horse! Surely they bear along The spoil of one whom Florence honoureth: And hark! the drum, the trumpeting dismay, The wail of the triumphal march of death. _RICHARD_ ’Twill be the funeral of Giovánn Duprè Wending to Santa Croce. Let us go And see what relic of old splendour cheers The dying ritual. _LAWRENCE_ They esteem him well To lay his bones with Michael Angelo. Who might he be? _RICHARD_ He too a sculptor, one Who left a work long to resist the years. _LAWRENCE_ You make me question further. _RICHARD_ I can tell All as we walk. A poor woodcarver’s son, Prenticed to cut his father’s rude designs (We have it from himself), maker of shrines, In his mean workshop in Siena dreamed; And saw as gods the artists of the earth, And long’d to stand on their immortal shore, And be as they, who in his vision gleam’d, Dowering the world with grace for evermore. So, taxing rest and leisure to one aim, The boy of single will and inbred skill Rose step by step to academic fame. _LAWRENCE_ Do I not know him then? His figures fill The tympana o’er Santa Croce’s gate; In the museum too, his Cain, that stands A left-handed discobolos.... _RICHARD_ So great His vogue, that elder art of classic worth Went to the wall to give his statues room; And last—his country’s praise could do no more— He cut the stone that honoured good Cavour. _LAWRENCE_ I have seen the things. _RICHARD_