Giotto's Tower by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The speaker compares lives of self-devotion and self-restraint that lack reverence and the saint's painted halo with Giotto's tower in Florence, whose architectural completeness still lacks a spire.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Sonnet, Meditative Poetry, Religious Poetry · 153 words
First lines
How many lives, made beautiful and sweet / By self-devotion and by self-restraint, / Whose pleasure is to run without complaint / On unknown errands of the Paraclete, / Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet, / Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint / Around the shining forehead of the saint, / And are in their completeness incomplete! / In the old Tuscan town stands Giotto's tower, / The lily of Florence blossoming in stone, -- / A vision, a delight, and a desire, -- / The builder's perfect and centennial flower, / That in the night of ages bloomed alone, / But wanting still the glory of the spire.
Genres
- Sonnet — Fourteen lines follow an ABBAABBA CDECDE rhyme scheme, turning from devoted lives to the tower after the eighth line.
- Meditative Poetry — The speaker considers how devoted lives can remain incomplete through a comparison with a finished tower that lacks its spire.
- Religious Poetry — Service to the Paraclete, reverence, and the painted halo of a saint frame the reflection on self-devotion.
Tags
sonnet · self-devotion · self-restraint · reverence · sainthood · architecture · Florence
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Giotto's Tower is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Sonnet, Meditative Poetry, Religious Poetry
- Length: 153 words
- Structure: 1 section, 1 paragraphs
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