Identifier: florenceinpoetry00ryan (find matches)
Title: Florence in poetry, history and art
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Ryan, Sara Agnes
Subjects:
Publisher: Chicago, Mayer and Miller Co.
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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ht o love; but in later life he reformed andtook up the study of the classics and followedand spread the light of the new birth, having,while Florentine ambassador, visited Rome,Avignon and Ravenna and formed a life-longfriendship with Petrarch. The following sonnet was written by him inconnection with his lectures on Dante: TO ONE WHO HAD CENSURED HIS PUBLICEXPOSITION OF DANTE. If Dante mourns, there wheresoeer he be,That such high fancies of a soul so proudShould be laid open to the vulgar crowd,(As, touching my Discourse, Im told by thee)This were my grievous pain; and certainlyMy proper blame should not be disavow d;Though hereof somewhat, I declare aloud,Were due to others, not alone to me.False hopes, true poverty, and therewithalThe blinded judgment of a host of friends,And their entreaties, made that I did thus.But of all this there is no gain at allUnto the thankless souls with whose base endsNothing agrees thats great or generous. —Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 104
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Boccaccio. Boccaccio is known to fame for his prosework, the Decameron. Though written in thevernacular and with the subject matter local,the style is classic, and it laid the foundationof modern Italian prose. In 1348, the Plague—the Black Death whichdevastated all Europe—visited Florence, andBoccaccio in the Decameron Ten Days takesin imagination three men and seven women to avilla near Florence, the Villa Palmieri—nowcalled the Villa Crawford—and with a let useat, drink and be merry spirit, they while awaythe time in song and story, shutting out allthought of the horrors around them. The num-ber of stories—which Boccaccio calls novels—isone hundred, one story a day from each person,and many of them are extremely sensual. We can trace the tales in English literaturefrom Chaucer down to the present time, but theauthors who have used them, have not done so,in some cases, to the elevation of their moraltone; however, Alfred Tennyson, in his high-mindedness, chose one worthy

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