Mrs. Browning's Grave At Florence.

Florence wears an added grace,
All her earlier honors crowning;
Dante's birthplace, Art's fair home,
Holds the dust of Barrett Browning.

Guardian of the noble dead
That beneath thy soil lie sleeping,
England, with full heart, commends
This new treasure to thy keeping.

Take her, she is half thine own;
In her verses' rich outpouring,
Breathes the warm Italian heart,
Yearning for the land's restoring.

From thy skies her poet-heart
Caught a fresher inspiration,
And her soul obtained new strength,
With her bodily translation.

Freely take what thou hast given,
Less her verses' rhythmic beauty,
Than the stirring notes that called
Trumpet-like thy sons to duty.

Rarest of exotic flowers
In thy native chaplet twining,
To the temple of thy great
Add her--she is worth enshrining.

Horatio Alger, Jr.

Horatio Alger, Jr. was a prolific 19th-century American author, best known for his many young adult novels about impoverished boys who rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage, and honesty. His works, which typically feature a rags-to-riches narrative, were immensely popular and instilled the American Dream ideal. Alger's stories were a reflection of the societal values of his time. However, despite his success as a writer, he lived a rather modest life and never married.

Horatio Alger, Jr.

Mrs. Merdle Discourseth Of The Necessity Of Good Wine And Other Matters.

Horatio Alger, Jr., Simple Poetry

Mrs. Merdle Discourseth Of Hygiene And Fish Sauce.

Horatio Alger, Jr., Simple Poetry

He Discourseth Of The Wherefore Of Bachelorism.

Horatio Alger, Jr., Simple Poetry

What Another Poet Did.

Horatio Alger, Jr., Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Boston To Florence

Proud of her clustering spires, her new-built towers,
Our Venice, stolen from the slumbering sea,
A sister's kindliest greeting wafts to thee,
Rose of Val d' Arno, queen of all its flowers!
Thine exile's shrine thy sorrowing love embowers,
Yet none with truer homage bends the knee,
Or stronger pledge of fealty brings, than we,
Whose poets make thy dead Immortal ours.
Lonely the height, but ah, to heaven how near!
Dante, whence flowed that solemn verse of thine
Like the stern river from its Apennine
Whose name the far-off Scythian thrilled with fear:
Now to all lands thy deep-toned voice is dear,
And every language knows the Song Divine!

Oliver Wendell Holmes

E. B. B.

I.

The white-rose garland at her feet,
The crown of laurel at her head,
Her noble life on earth complete,
Lay her in the last low bed
For the slumber calm and deep:
He giveth His belovèd sleep.



II.

Soldiers find their fittest grave
In the field whereon they died;
So her spirit pure and brave
Leaves the clay it glorified
To the land for which she fought
With such grand impassioned thought.



III.

Keats and Shelley sleep at Rome,
She in well-loved Tuscan earth;
Finding all their deaths long home
Far from their old home of birth.
Italy, you hold in trust
Very sacred English dust.



IV.

Therefore this one prayer I breathe,
That you yet may worthy prove

James Thomson

To Dante

King, that hast reignd six hundred years, and grown
In power, and ever growest, since thine own
Fair Florence honouring thy nativity,
Thy Florence now the crown of Italy,
Hath sought the tribute of a verse from me,
I, wearing but the garland of a day,
Cast at thy feet one flower that fades away.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

De Gustibus --

Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
(If our loves remain)
In an English lane,
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
Making love, say,
The happier they!
Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,
And let them pass, as they will too soon,
With the bean-flowers boon,
And the blackbirds tune,
And May, and June!


What I love best in all the world
Is a castle, precipice-encurled,
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine
Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
(If I get my head from out the mouth
O the grave, and loose my spirits bands,
And come again to the land of lands)
In a sea-side house to the farther South,
Where the baked cicala die...

Robert Browning

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!

Emma Lazarus

Memorials Of A Tour In Italy, 1837 - XIX. - At Florence

Under the shadow of a stately Pile,
The dome of Florence, pensive and alone,
Nor giving heed to aught that passed the while,
I stood, and gazed upon a marble stone,
The laureled Dante's favourite seat. A throne,
In just esteem, it rivals; though no style
Be there of decoration to beguile
The mind, depressed by thought of greatness flown.
As a true man, who long had served the lyre,
I gazed with earnestness, and dared no more.
But in his breast the mighty Poet bore
A Patriot's heart, warm with undying fire.
Bold with the thought, in reverence I sate down,
And, for a moment, filled that empty Throne.

William Wordsworth