Page:Florence Earle Coates Poems 1898 66.jpg

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66
A TOMB IN TUSCANY

An art too heavenly to perish:
A beauty, born of passion pure,
That shall endure!"


So spoke he; and now lies asleep,
While near him forms angelic keep
Unwearied watch, and from decay
Guard him alway:
Rare, sculptured forms that blend his story
With Donatello's deathless glory,
And make mankind his debtors be
Eternally.


For lordly castles, as he said,
Have crumbled; ay, and bastions dread,
And temples grave and gardens gay
Become as they.
Each vaunted image of his power
Has perished like a wayside flower,
But living in the art he fed,
He is not dead!