Not that I expect the great Bigordi, Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose; Nor the wronged Lippino; and not a word I Say of a scrap of Fra Angelico's; But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi, 205 To grant me a taste of your intonaco, Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye? Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco? Could not the ghost with the close red cap, My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman, 210 Save me a sample, give me the hap Of a muscular Christ that shows the draftsman? No Virgin by him the somewhat petty, Of finical touch and tempera crumbly-- Could not Alesso Baldovinetti 215 Contribute so much, I ask him humbly? Margheritone of Arezzo, With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?) 220 Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion, Where in the foreground kneels the donor? If such remain, as is my conviction, The hoarding it does you but little honor. They pass; for them the panels may thrill, 225 The tempera grow alive and tinglish; Their pictures are left to the mercies still Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English, Who, seeing mere money's worth in their prize, Will sell it to somebody calm as Zeno 230 At naked High Art, and in ecstasies Before some clay-cold vile Carlino! No matter for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it-- Oh, never! it shall not be counted true-- 235 That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover-- Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! and to whom?--to whom? 240 I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito, (Or was it rather the Ognissanti?) Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe! Nay, I shall have it yet! _Detur amanti!_ My Koh-i-noor--or (if that's a platitude) 245 Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi's eye; So, in anticipative gratitude, What if I take up my hope and prophesy? When the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing, 250 To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard, We shall begin by way of rejoicing; None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge), Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer, Hunting Radetzky's soul like a partridge 255 Over Morello with squib and cracker.