The story here poetically retold of the great Florentine sculptor shows how much a lofty spirit may make of unpromising material.

For years it had been trampled in the street
Of Florence by the drift of heedless feet—
The stone that star-touched Michael Angelo
Turned to that marble loveliness we know.

You mind the tale—how he was passing by
When the rude marble caught his Jovian eye,
That stone men had dishonored and had thrust
Out to the insult of the wayside dust.
He stooped to lift it from its mean estate,
And bore it on his shoulder to the gate,
Where all day long a hundred hammers rang.
And soon his chisel round the marble sang,
And suddenly the hidden angel shone:
It had been waiting prisoned in the stone.

Thus came the cherub with the laughing face
That long has lighted up an altar-place.

Edwin Markham.

From "The Gates of Paradise, and Other Poems."