| |
| WHERE three huge dogs are ramping yonder, | |
| Before that villa with its tower, | |
| No braver boys, no father fonder, | |
| Ever prolonged the moonlight hour. | |
| |
| Often to watch their sports unseen, | 5 |
| Along the broad stone bench he lies, | |
| The oleander-stems between, | |
| And citron boughs to shade his eyes. | |
| |
| The clouds now whiten far away, | |
| And villas glimmer thick below, | 10 |
| And windows catch the quivering ray, | |
| Obscure one minute’s space ago. | |
| |
| Orchards and vine-knolls maple-propped | |
| Rise radiant round; the meads are dim, | |
| As if the milky-way had dropped | 15 |
| And filled Valdarno to the brim. | |
| |
| Unseen beneath us, on the right, | |
| The abbey with unfinished front | |
| Of checkered marble, black and white, | |
| And on the left the Doccia’s font. | 20 |
| |
| Eastward, two ruined castles rise | |
| Beyond Maiano’s mossy mill, | |
| Winter and Time their enemies, | |
| Without their warder, stately still. | |
| |
| The heaps around them there will grow | 25 |
| Higher, as years sweep by, and higher | |
| Till every battlement laid low | |
| Is seized and trampled by the brier. | |
| |
| That line so lucid is the weir | |
| Of Rorezzano; but behold | 30 |
| The graceful tower of Giotto there, | |
| And Duomo’s cross of freshened gold. | |
| |
| We cannot tell, so far away, | |
| Whether the city’s tongue be mute, | |
| We only hear some lover play | 35 |
| (If sighs be play) the sighing flute. | |
| |
