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| THIS is the church which Pisa, great and free, | |
| Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls, | |
| That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear | |
| To shiver in the deep and voluble tones | |
| Rolled from the organ! Underneath my feet | 5 |
| There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault. | |
| The image of an armed knight is graven | |
| Upon it, clad in perfect panoply,— | |
| Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm, | |
| Gauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned shield. | 10 |
| Around, in Gothic characters, worn dim | |
| By feet of worshippers, are traced his name, | |
| And birth, and death, and words of eulogy. | |
| Why should I pore upon them? This old tomb, | |
| This effigy, the strange, disused form | 15 |
| Of this inscription, eloquently show | |
| His history. Let me clothe in fitting words | |
| The thoughts they breathe, and frame his epitaph. | |
| “He whose forgotten dust for centuries | |
| Has lain beneath this stone was one in whom | 20 |
| Adventure and endurance and emprise | |
| Exalted the mind’s faculties and strung | |
| The body’s sinews. Brave he was in fight, | |
| Courteous in banquet, scornful of repose, | |
| And bountiful, and cruel, and devout, | 25 |
| And quick to draw the sword in private feud. | |
| He pushed his quarrels to the death, yet prayed | |
| The saints as fervently on bended knees | |
| As ever shaven cenobite. He loved | |
| As fiercely as he fought. He would have borne | 30 |
| The maid that pleased him from her bower by night | |
| To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears | |
| His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks | |
| On his pursuers. He aspired to see | |
| His native Pisa queen and arbitress | 35 |
| Of cities; earnestly for her he raised | |
| His voice in council, and affronted death | |
| In battle-field, and climbed the galley’s deck, | |
| And brought the captured flag of Genoa back, | |
| Or piled upon the Arno’s crowded quay | 40 |
| The glittering spoils of the tamed Saracen. | |
| He was not born to brook the stranger’s yoke, | |
| But would have joined the exiles that withdrew | |
| Forever, when the Florentine broke in | |
| The gates of Pisa, and bore off the bolts | 45 |
| For trophies,—but he died before that day. | |
| “He lived, the impersonation of an age | |
| That never shall return. His soul of fire | |
| Was kindled by the breath of the rude time | |
| He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds, | 50 |
| Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier, | |
| Turning from the reproaches of the past, | |
| And from the hopeless future, gives to ease | |
| And love and music his inglorious life.” | |
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