Who Painted the Roses?

I love cloisters, and the colors of this particular one, but am not coming up with the words to fit it, late on a late September day.  I have found this poem, though, that talks of another Italian cloister and its roses.

Chiostro Verde

HERE in the old Green Cloister

At Santa Maria Novella

The grey well in the centre

Is dry to the granite curb;

No splashing will ever disturb

The cool depth of the shaft.

In the stone-bordered quadrangle

Daisies, in galaxy, spangle

The vivid cloud of grass.

Four young cypresses fold

Themselves in their mantles of shadow

Away from the sun's hot gold;

And roses revel in the light,

Hundreds of roses; if one could gather

The flush that fades over the Arno

Under Venus at sundown

And dye a snow-rose with the colour,

The ghost of the flame on the snow

Might give to a painter the glow

Of these roses.

Above the roof of the cloister

Rises the rough church wall

Worn with the tides of Time.

The burnished pigeons climb

And slide in the shadowed air,

Wing-whispering everywhere,

Coo and murmur and call

From their nooks in the crannied wall.

Then on the rustling space,

Falling with delicate grace,

Boys' voices from the far off choir,

The full close of a phrase,

A cadence of Palestrina

Or something of even older days,

No words—only the tune.

It dies now—too soon.

Will music forever die,

The soul bereft of its cry,

And no young throats

Vibrate to clear new notes?

While the cadence was hovering in air

The pigeons were flying

In front of the seasoned stone,

Visiting here and there,

Cooing from the cool shade

Of their nooks in the wall;

Who taught the pigeons their call

Their murmurous music?

Under the roof of the cloister

A few frescoes are clinging

Made by Paolo Uccello,

Once they were clear and mellow

Now they have fallen away

To a dull green-gray,

What has not fallen will fall;

Of all colour bereft

Will nothing at last be left

But a waste wall?

Will painting forever perish,

Will no one be left to cherish

The beauty of life and the world,

Will the soul go blind of the vision?

Who painted those silver lights in the daisies

That sheen in the grass-cloud

That hides their stars or discloses,

Who stained the bronze-green shroud

Wrapping the cypress

Who painted the roses?

—Duncan Campbell Scott

© Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1935

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Cloister with Pink Roses, Verona