Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,
Fortress of falling Empire! honoured sleeps[1]
The immortal Exile;—Arqua, too, her store
Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,
While Florence vainly begs her banished dead and weeps.[2]
LX.
What is her Pyramid of precious stones?N22
Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues
Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones
- ↑ Shelter of exiled Empire——.—[MS. M. erased.]
- ↑ [The inscription on Ricci's monument to Dante, in the Church of Santa Croce—"A majoribus ter frustra decretum"—refers to the vain attempts which Florence had made to recover the remains of her exiled and once-neglected poet.]
- ↑ ["I also went to the Medici chapel—fine frippery in great slabs of various expensive stones, to commemorate fifty rotten and forgotten carcasses. It is unfinished, and will remain so" (Letter to Murray, April 26, 1817). The bodies of the grand-dukes lie in the crypt of the Cappella dei Principi, or Medicean Chapel, which forms part of the Church of San Lorenzo. The walls of the chapel are encrusted with rich marbles and "stones of price, to garniture the edifice." The monuments to Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici, son and grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, with Michael Angelo's allegorical figures of Night and Morning, Aurora and Twilight, are in the adjoining Cappella dei Depositi, or Sagrestia Nuova.]
Brutus, A.D. 22, the busts of her husband and brother were not allowed to be carried in the procession, because they had taken part in the assassination of Julius Cæsar. But none the less, "Præfulgebant Brutus et Cassius eo ipso quod effigies eorum non videbantur" (Tacitus, Ann., iii. 76). Their glory was conspicuous in men's minds, because their images were withheld from men's eyes. As Tacitus says elsewhere (iv. 26), "Negatus honor gloriam intendit."]
