“Raphael was buried in the Pantheon (Sta. Maria della Rotunda), in
a chapel which he had himself endowed, and near the place where his
betrothed bride had been laid. The immediate neighbourhood was afterwards
selected by other painters as their place of rest. Baldassane Peruzzi,
Giovanni da Udine, Pierino del Vaga, Taddeo Zuccaro, and others, are
buried near. No question had ever existed as to the precise spot
where the remains of the master lay; but a few years since the Roman
antiquaries began to raise doubts even respecting the church in which
Raphael was buried. In the end, permission was obtained to make actual
search; and Vasari’s account was in this instance verified. The tomb was
found as he describes it, behind the altar itself of the chapel above
mentioned. Four views of the tomb and its contents were engraved from
drawings by Cammucini, and thus preserve the appearance that presented
itself. The shroud had been fastened with a number of metal rings and
points; some of these were kept by the sculptor Fabrio of Rome, who is
also in possession of casts from the skull and right hand. Passavant
remarks, judging from the cast, that the skull was of a singularly fine
form. The bones of the hand were all perfect, but they crumbled into
dust after the mould was taken. The skeleton measured about five feet
seven inches. The coffin was extremely narrow, indicating a very slender
frame. The precious relics were ultimately restored to the same spot,
after being placed in a magnificent sarcophagus, presented by the present
Pope.”--_Quarterly Review._
Ay, there are glorious things even in the dust
Which still must ever from the human heart
Win homage next devotion. ’Tis in vain
To ask the wherefore, or demand what are they
Amid the keen realities of life?
Old coin, or broken casque, or fretted stone--
The waste of Time--the rack upon life’s shore
Thrown up by the spent waves of centuries--
They have no meaning in the vulgar tongue;
Their very uses know them not--things past
Into the chaos of forgotten forms.
But here the root of this deep error lies.
The world’s deep Lethé onward blindly glides,
A perishable Present! glorious only
Because no Future and no Past are seen
To scare or shame its dreamy voyager.
In dull forgetfulness the error lies,
That hath no feeling of the mighty Past
Espoused to sense, and purblind as the mole
To all that meets the intellectual eye:
To such Iona is a heap of stones,
And Marathon a desert …
… O, how changed!
The meanest thing on which great Time hath set
His awful stamp (the long-surviving thought
Left by the mind of other days) appears
To knowledge and the gaze of memory,
More instantaneous than those words of power
Which ancient legends say the tomb obeyed--
The broken pillar, and the moss-grown pile,
Dilate into antique magnificence:
At once the stern old rampart crowns its height--
The donjon keep, the tower of ancient pride,
The rock-built fortress of old robber kings,
Start into life, and from their portals pour
Mailed foray forth, or pomp of feudal war.
The temple swells from vacancy, o’erarching
With pillared roof, and dim solemnity,
The worship of old time. The dry bones live
Of ancient ages: monarch, sage, and bard,
Stand in their living lineaments, invested
With power, or wisdom, or the gift of song.
These still are common ruins--the remains
Of those who were the vulgar of their day,
Who battled, built, and traded, and so died,
Leaving no trace but nameless monuments,
The cast attire of ages, which but serve
To show the present how the past went mad,
And, like Cassandra, prophesy in vain.
The earth yet bears more glorious vestiges
Of Time’s illustrious few, whose memory
Is greater than the greatest thing that lives--
Haloed by veneration, wonder, love--
Whose very tombs stand in life’s calendar
Eras of thought once seen. Is there an eye
Could coldly gaze on aught that bears a trace
Of Avon’s matchless master of the breast?
Who could approach old Dryburgh’s tombs, and feel not
The illustrious presence of his great compeer,
Whose tomb yet moistens with a nation’s woe,
Whose star is young in heaven? Or who can walk
Unmoved the cloisters and religious aisles
Where Milton lies, renowned with “prophets old,”
And honoured Newton, to whom the starred vault
Is an enduring monument, as much
As the Pantheon’s dome is Angelo’s?
What is the pride of kings, the world’s vain splendour,
To such a presence as they witnessed there
Who disinterred the bones of Raphael,
Awful from the repose of centuries?
There stood that day a solemn, anxious crowd
Around that altar which conceals beneath
The mighty master’s relics--for there was a doubt
If it were truly there that he was laid.
And there they found all the dull grave could keep
Of that Immortal. With no common awe
They bent o’er his dark cell, as it disclosed
Its treasure to the selfsame holy light
That gladdened oft of old the master’s heart,
And waked his heaven-eyed genius; while beneath
The shadowy splendour of that spacious dome
He stood in living sanctity, a pure
And heavenly-minded man--even where they stood
To gaze upon his dust--and all around
He scattered bright and hallowed images
Of perfect beauty--in their brightness there
Still lying as he left them. Shadows fair
Of angel form and feature--ye who gaze
In clouded splendour through those cloisters old,
Looking as things of life--could ye behold
Those slender bones, they were the living hand
Beneath whose touch ye started into being
And grew to light and beauty, covering
Your storied frescoes with the lines of grace,
Harmonious hues and features of the sky.
And yonder is your birthplace, yon light skull--
The slight and delicate shrine of all that mind!
’Tis a strange thought how vast a world resolved
In thy small compass! Senseless as thou art,
Who could behold thee as a mouldering bone,
The mere dust of unsphered humanity?
There, from that lowly cell as rose to light
The canonized remains of one whose mind
Hath been a worship to the eye of ages,
They were not seen thus coldly--time gave back
Its venerable honours registered
Deep in the heart of living Italy--
A crown of many-tinted sanctities.
Thy beauty, goodness, and pure innocence,
Thy faculty of vision, gift divine,
Rushed round thee as a glory--thou wert seen
With all thy laurels round thy honoured tomb.
Thine is no pile of unrecording stone--
Pale marble column or tall pyramid,
That vainly robs oblivion of its prey:
Thy name lives on each lip--thy monuments
Are treasures fondly kept midst precious things,
Sought out in every land which the sun warms
To nobler thoughts--thine are perennial wreaths
Of trophies yet surviving, when the fame
Of fields that rang through Europe, and made pale
The peaceful hamlets of an hundred realms,
Have shrunk within the fretted register,
The silent scroll, named History--still the halls
Of national state or regal pomp are bright
With thy far-sought creations, costliest
Among the treasured trophies of the mind;
And as thy time on earth was consecrated
To sacred labours meet for holy walls--
So would I deem thy gifted spirit still,
Invested in its light of heavenly thoughts,
The minister of some pure temple, where
No human errors mingle with the work.