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Restlessness

Would I had waked this morn where Florence smiles,
A-bloom with beauty, a white rose full-blown,
Yet rich in sacred dust, in storied stone,
Precious past all the wealth of Indian isles-
From olive-hoary Fiesole to feed
On Brunelleschi's dome my hungry eye,
And see against the lotus-colored sky,
Spring the slim belfry graceful as a reed.
To kneel upon the ground where Dante trod,
To breathe the air of immortality
From Angelo and Raphael-TO BE-
Each sense new-quickened by a demi-god.
To hear the liquid Tuscan speech at whiles,
From citizen and peasant, to behold
The heaven of Leonardo washed with gold-
Would I had waked this morn where Florence smile!

poem by Emma Lazarus
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Stanzas Written In Passing The Ambracian Gulf

Through cloudless skies, in silvery sheen,
Full beams the moon on Actium's coast:
And on these waves for Egypt's queen,
The ancient world was won and lost.

And now upon the scene I look,
The azure grave of many a Roman;
Where stem Ambition once forsook
His wavering crown to follow woman.

Florence! whom I will love as well
As ever yet was said or sung
(Since Orpheus sang his spouse from hell),
Whilst thou art fair and I am young;

Sweet Florence! those were pleasant times;
When worlds were staked for ladies'
Had bards as many realms as rhymes;
Thy charms might raise new Antonies.

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poem by Byron
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Florence - Future Flowering Flows

FUTURE FLOWERING FLOWS FLORENCE
Future Flowering Flows. Fiery Faith Follows From Force, Final Freedom Fancies

Future Life Of Rich Enchantment Now Channels Energy
Flowering Like One Rose, Eternal. Novel Creative Experience
Flows Liquidly Onwards, Retinting Endless Nuances, Changing Ever.
Fiery Lights Overtly Reflect, Echo Nature’s Climax, Endorsing
Faith. Letters, Ordered Rationnally, Entwine Name, Combine. Each
Follows, Leaps Over, Resistance. Exhuberance, Neatly Coloured, Extracts
From Lines Of Reason Emotions Noble. Control Enhances
Force Lightly Or Rarely, - Encouraging Never Constraints Excessive.
Final Links Offer Renaissance. Each Neurone Consciously Explores
Freedom, Lifting Out Restrictions, Eliminating Noise. Closely Examined,
First Levels, Once Reread, Engender New Chance Expressions.
Fancy’s Leaves Open, Revelation Enraptures. Nirvana, Culminating Ecstasy...

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poem by Jonathan Robin
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Being In Love In 1974.

Being in love
was like being ill
and that day
after Judy'd left

to go to Florence
for a week
you went to the big city
to take your mind off her

but she lingered there
wherever you went
every brunette
with long hair

was her
and when you sat
in the Royal Opera House
to watch a ballet

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poem by Terry Collett
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Being in Love in 1974.(poem)

Being in love
was like being ill
and that day
after Judy'd left

to go to Florence
for a week
you went to the big city
to take your mind off her

but she lingered there
wherever you went
every brunette
with long hair

was her
and when you sat
in the Royal Opera House
to watch a ballet

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poem by Terry Collett
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Florentine Pilgrim

"I'll do the old dump in a day,"
He told me in his brittle way.
"Two more, I guess, I'll give to Rome
Before I hit the trail for home;
But while I'm there I kindo' hope
To have an audience with the Pope."

We stood upon the terraced height
With sunny Florence in our sight.
I gazed and gazed, too moved to speak
Until he queried: "What's that creek?"
"The Arno, sir," I said surprised;
He stared at it with empty eyes.

"It is," said I, "the storied stream
Where Dante used to pace and dream,
And wait for Beatrice to pass."
(Oh how I felt a silly ass
Explaining this.) With eyes remote
He asked: "Was Beatrice a boat?"

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poem by Robert William Service
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Possessions Are Nine Points Of Conversation

Some people, and it doesn't matter whether they are paupers or millionaires, Think that anything they have is the best in the world just because it is theirs. If they happen to own a 1921 jalopy, They look at their neighbor's new de luxe convertible like the wearer of a 57th Street gown at a 14th Street copy. If their seventeen-year-old child is still in the third grade they sneer at the graduation of the seventeen-year-old children of their friends, Claiming that prodigies always come to bad ends, And if their roof leaks, It's because the shingles are antiques. Other people, and if doesn't matter if they are Scandinavians or Celts, Think that anything is better than theirs just because it belongs to somebody else. If you congratulate them when their blue-blooded Doberman pinscher wins the obedience championship, they look at you like a martyr, And say that the garbage man's little Rover is really infinitely smarter; And if they smoke fifteen-cent cigars they are sure somebody else gets better cigars for a dime. And if they take a trip to Paris they are sure their friends who went to Old Orchard had a better time. Yes, they look on their neighbor's ox and ass with covetousness and their own ox and ass with abhorrence, And if they are wives they want their husband to be like Florence's Freddie, and if they are husbands they want their wives to be like Freddie's Florence. I think that comparisons are truly odious, I do not approve of this constant proud or envious to-do; And furthermore, dear friends, I think that you and yours are delightful and I also think that me and mine are delightful too.

poem by Ogden Nash
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Invocation

Where Apennine slopes unto Tuscan plain,
And breaks into dimples, and laughs to flowers,
To see where the terrors of Winter wane,
And out of a valley of grape and grain
There blossoms a City of domes and towers,

Teuton, Lombard, and grasping Gaul,
Prince and Pontiff, have forced their way,
Have forded the river, and scaled the wall,
And made in its palaces stye and stall,
Where spears might glisten and war-steeds neigh.

But ever since Florence was fair and young,
And the sun upon turret and belfry shone,
Were her windows bannered and joy-bells rung,
When back to his saddle the Stranger sprung,
And lances were lifted and pikemen gone.

Yes, ever and ever till you, my Queen,
Came over the sea that is all your own,

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poem by Alfred Austin
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Clay Feet

“D’you think God knows what He is doing? ”
a few bold angels dared to ask
when He created Man. At their first viewing,
they saw that He had botched this task,
because He’d left Man’s legs unfinished,
and though his brilliant brain held sway,
his human stature was diminished
because he stood on feet of clay.

A golden oldie now, Man’s not
improved in time, and every gate
of paradise is closed, and what
the angels said explains his fate.
God made his brain more brilliant than
the apes from which he had descended,
but giving feet of clay to Man
made him than angels far less splendid.
Roberta Smith (“Golden Oldies with a New Sparkle, ” NYT, October 30,2007) writes about an exhibition of three of “The Gates of Paradise” by Lorenzo Ghiberti at the Metropolitan Museum:
Most of the historic sculptures, frescoes and edifices of early-15th-century Florence are not the least bit portable. It’s simple: You want to see them, you go to Florence. But right now nearly a third of one of the city’s greatest glories can be seen without leaving town, by visiting “The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This show presents 3 of the 10 gilded bronze reliefs that decorate the doors created by Ghiberti from 1425 to 1452 for the 12th- to 13th-century Baptistery of San Giovanni. Newly cleaned, they have never looked more golden or less oldie. One of the treasures of the early Renaissance, the 17-foot-high doors depict Old Testament scenes in a radically new fusion of physical action, emotional intensity and narrative complexity. Especially the three reliefs at the Met. Their subjects are Adam and Eve, Jacob and Esau, and David and Goliath. Each is pictorially unified and yet, in a different way, almost cinematic in effect… Ghiberti’s feeling for physical detail and emotional nuance keeps his surfaces alive, edge to edge. As Adam and Eve’s story unfolds, for example, angels register everything from joy to skepticism to alarm. (An angel watching God awaken Adam seems to be asking, “Does he know what he’s doing? ”)

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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Dedication To Lady Windsor

Where violets blue to olives gray
From furrows brown lift laughing eyes,
And silvery Mensola sings its way
Through terraced slopes, nor seeks to stay,
But onward and downward leaps and flies;

Where vines, just newly burgeoned, link
Their hands to join the dance of Spring,
Green lizards glisten from clest and chink,
And almond blossoms rosy pink
Cluster and perch, ere taking wing;

Where over strips of emerald wheat
Glimmer red peach and snowy pear,
And nightingales all day long repeat
Their love-song, not less glad than sweet,
They chant in sorrow and gloom elsewhere;

Where, as the mid-day belfries peal,
The peasant halts beside his steer,

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poem by Alfred Austin
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