he epithets and
phrases are in themselves sufficient to suggest the varying moods of
the Venetian merrymakers. The plaintiveness, the sighs, the sense of
death, the trembling hope that life may last, the renewed love-making,
the new round of futile pleasures or evil deeds, the end of it all in
the grave, are clearly brought forth. An elaborate explanation of the
musical terms is given in the notes to the Camberwell edition of
Browning's poems.

31. _But when I sit down to reason._ The first thirty lines of the poem
have recorded the effect of the music in re-creating in the poet's
imagination the gay, careless life of eighteenth century Venice, and its
close in death. Now when the poet endeavors to turn from that picture of
death lurking under smiles, he finds that the cold music has filled his
mind with an inescapable sense of the futility of life, and even his own
chosen mental activities seem to him, along with the rest, hardly more
than dust and ashes. Ambition and enthusiasm fade before the spell of
the music.

OLD PICTURES IN FLORENCE

3. _Aloed arch._ The genus aloe includes trees, shrubs, and herbs. The
American variety is the century-plant. Browning's hill-side villa
evidently had aloes trained to grow in an arch.

15. _The startling bell-tower Giotto raised._ Giotto began the Campanile
in 1334, and after his death in 1337 the work was continued by Andrea
Pisano. Its striking beauty impresses the poet as he looks out over the
city. But it does more than that, for it rouses in him reflections on
the progress and meaning of art.

17-24. The address to Giotto, thrown in here as it is with
conversational freedom, is partially explained in lines 184-248. See
note on l. 236.

30. _By a gift God grants me._ The power to re-create vividly and
minutely the past. The artists of bygone centuries are called back by
his imagination to their old haunts in Florence.

44. _Stands One._ The "one" (l. 44), "a lion" (l. 47), "the wronged
great soul" (l. 48), and "the wronged great souls" (l. 58), all refer to
the unappreciated early artists.

50. _They._ That is, the famous great artists such as Michael Angelo and
Raphael. Critics "hum and buzz" around them with praise to which they
are indifferent.

59. _Where their work is all to do._ Their place in the development of
art is not yet understood. It must be made clear, Browning thinks, that
painters like Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) come in natural succession
from