San Lorenzo is a Florentine church with no conventional façade but a particularly beautiful interior: see an illustration here. Little is known of the author, John de Selby Westbrook.
San Lorenzo
by Westbrook
Across the way see San Lorenzo stand
Averted from the commerce of the square.
His rugged front is bluff, unmarbled, bare,
His air distinguished, but in no way grand.
Inside, the church is quite another story:
A cloister in sunlit serenity,
The Quattrocento in the library,
The nave’s harmonious, purple-shadowed glory.
Worldly news does not stir San Lorenzo:
He’s barely timebound, not concerned with such
As timebound men may feel they need to know,
Words too ephemeral to matter much.
Far sweeter matters occupy his ken:
His maker, and the beauty made by men.
