Explore "Giotto's Tower" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.