and forget--nay, best of all, to be stone and feel no more."

The old writer Vasari, who was once a pupil of Michelangelo, and tells
us many anecdotes of the sculptor, relates that when the statue of
Night was first shown to the public, it called forth a verse from a
contemporary poet (Giovan Battista Strozzi). This is the verse:--

"Night in so sweet an attitude beheld
Asleep, was by an angel sculptured
In this stone; and sleeping, is alive;
Waken her, doubter; she will speak to thee."[32]

To this Michelangelo replied in the following lines:[33]--

"Welcome is sleep, more welcome sleep of stone
Whilst crime and shame continue in the land;
My happy fortune not to see or hear;
Waken me not;--in mercy whisper low."[32]

The artist's verse may be taken as a keynote to the solemn tragedy of
the work. In fact, the monuments are not really to Lorenzo and
Giuliano, but to Florence, to "the great city which had struggled and
erred so long, which had gone astray and repented, and suffered and
erred again, but always mightily, with full tide of life in her veins
and consciousness in her heart, until now the time had come when she
was dead and past, chained down by icy oppression in a living
grave."[34]

[Footnote 32: Both translations are from Horners' _Walks in Florence_.
Symonds has also translated the verses, but less literally.]