Your sad sweet joy is like folded wings—wings of many colors.
Your madonnas, your Flora, your Venus, rise from dreams at dawn,
Half afraid of the sun.
They are lovely as a lunar moth caught by the morning,
A moth that loves the moon.
In their slow-lifting eyes is a question you could not answer,
O thoughtful Florentine adrift in doubt
As on a troubled sea.
Savonarola, so strong, so sure, with the mountains around him,
Was your port from the searching winds;
You sailed in gladly, and threw the vanities overboard—
Your precious pictures, your pagan dreams.
But when they burned him, again you were not sure,
For what is truth?
You craved the absolute beauty,
You were stricken with the passion of perfection;
And life confused you,
And in your joy is pain.