Opening on each side from the river were gardens, courts,
and cloisters; long successions of white pillars among wreaths of
vine; leaping of fountains through buds of pomegranate and orange:
and still along the garden-paths, and under and through the crimson
of the pomegranate shadows, moving slowly, groups of the fairest
women that Italy ever saw - fairest, because purest and
thoughtfullest; trained in all high knowledge, as in all courteous
art - in dance, in song, in sweet wit, in lofty learning, in
loftier courage, in loftiest love - able alike to cheer, to
enchant, or save, the souls of men. Above all this scenery of
perfect human life, rose dome and bell-tower, burning with white
alabaster and gold: beyond dome and bell-tower the slopes of
mighty hills hoary with olive; far in the north, above a purple sea
of peaks of solemn Apennine, the clear, sharp-cloven Carrara
mountains sent up their steadfast flames of marble summit into
amber sky; the great sea itself, scorching with expanse of light,
stretching from their feet to the Gorgonian isles; and over all
these, ever present, near or far - seen through the leaves of vine,
or imaged with all its march of clouds in the Arno's stream, or set
with its depth of blue close against the golden hair and burning
cheek of lady and knight, - that untroubled and sacred sky, which
was to all men, in those days of innocent faith, indeed the
unquestioned abode of spirits, as the earth was of men; and which
opened straight through its gates of cloud and veils of dew into
the awfulness of the eternal world; - a heaven in which every cloud
that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of
its Evening and Morning streamed from the throne of God.
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