Volume IV Part 10 (2/2)
I tell you rather that, whoever may Discern true ends here, shall grow pure enough To love them, brave enough to strive for them, And strong to reach them though the roads be rough: That having learnt--by no mere apophthegm-- Not just the draping of a graceful stuff About a statue, broidered at the hem,-- Not just the trilling on an opera-stage Of ”liberta” to bravos--(a fair word, Yet too allied to inarticulate rage And breathless sobs, for singing, though the chord Were deeper than they struck it) but the gauge Of civil wants sustained and wrongs abhorred, The serious sacred meaning and full use Of freedom for a nation,--then, indeed, Our Tuscans, underneath the b.l.o.o.d.y dews Of some new morning, rising up agreed And bold, will want no Saxon souls or thews To sweep their piazzas clear of Austria's breed.
Alas, alas! it was not so this time.
Conviction was not, courage failed, and truth Was something to be doubted of. The mime Changed masks, because a mime. The tide as smooth In running in as out, no sense of crime Because no sense of virtue,--sudden ruth Seized on the people: they would have again Their good Grand-duke and leave Guerazzi, though He took that tax from Florence. ”Much in vain He takes it from the market-carts, we trow, While urgent that no market-men remain, But all march off and leave the spade and plough, To die among the Lombards. Was it thus The dear paternal Duke did? Live the Duke!”
At which the joy-bells mult.i.tudinous, Swept by an opposite wind, as loudly shook.
Call back the mild archbishop to his house, To bless the people with his frightened look,-- He shall not yet be hanged, you comprehend!
Seize on Guerazzi; guard him in full view, Or else we stab him in the back, to end!
Rub out those chalked devices, set up new The Duke's arms, doff your Phrygian caps, and men The pavement of the piazzas broke into By barren poles of freedom: smooth the way For the ducal carriage, lest his highness sigh ”Here trees of liberty grew yesterday!”
”Long live the Duke!”--how roared the cannonry, How rocked the bell-towers, and through thickening spray Of nosegays, wreaths, and kerchiefs tossed on high, How marched the civic guard, the people still Being good at shouts, especially the boys!
Alas, poor people, of an unfledged will Most fitly expressed by such a callow voice!
Alas, still poorer Duke, incapable Of being worthy even of so much noise!
You think he came back instantly, with thanks And tears in his faint eyes, and hands extended To stretch the franchise through their utmost ranks?
That having, like a father, apprehended, He came to pardon fatherly those pranks Played out and now in filial service ended?-- That some love-token, like a prince, he threw To meet the people's love-call, in return?
Well, how he came I will relate to you; And if your hearts should burn, why, hearts _must_ burn, To make the ashes which things old and new Shall be washed clean in--as this Duke will learn.
From Casa Guidi windows gazing, then, I saw and witness how the Duke came back.
The regular tramp of horse and tread of men Did smite the silence like an anvil black And sparkless. With her wide eyes at full strain, Our Tuscan nurse exclaimed ”Alack, alack, Signora! these shall be the Austrians.” ”Nay, Be still,” I answered, ”do not wake the child!”
--For so, my two-months' baby sleeping lay In milky dreams upon the bed and smiled, And I thought ”He shall sleep on, while he may, Through the world's baseness: not being yet defiled, Why should he be disturbed by what is done?”
Then, gazing, I beheld the long-drawn street Live out, from end to end, full in the sun, With Austria's thousand; sword and bayonet, Horse, foot, artillery,--cannons rolling on Like blind slow storm-clouds gestant with the heat Of undeveloped lightnings, each bestrode By a single man, dust-white from head to heel, Indifferent as the dreadful thing he rode, Like a sculptured Fate serene and terrible.
As some smooth river which has overflowed Will slow and silent down its current wheel A loosened forest, all the pines erect, So swept, in mute significance of storm, The marshalled thousands; not an eye deflect To left or right, to catch a novel form Of Florence city adorned by architect And carver, or of Beauties live and warm Scared at the cas.e.m.e.nts,--all, straightforward eyes And faces, held as steadfast as their swords, And cognizant of acts, not imageries.
The key, O Tuscans, too well fits the wards!
Ye asked for mimes,--these bring you tragedies: For purple,--these shall wear it as your lords.
Ye played like children,--die like innocents.
Ye mimicked lightnings with a torch,--the crack Of the actual bolt, your pastime circ.u.mvents.
Ye called up ghosts, believing they were slack To follow any voice from Gilboa's tents, ...
Here's Samuel!--and, so, Grand-dukes come back!
And yet, they are no prophets though they come: That awful mantle, they are drawing close, Shall be searched, one day, by the shafts of Doom Through double folds now hoodwinking the brows.
Resuscitated monarchs disentomb Grave-reptiles with them, in their new life-throes.
Let such beware. Behold, the people waits, Like G.o.d: as He, in His serene of might, So they, in their endurance of long straits.
Ye stamp no nation out, though day and night Ye tread them with that absolute heel which grates And grinds them flat from all attempted height.
You kill worms sooner with a garden-spade Than you kill peoples: peoples will not die; The tail curls stronger when you lop the head: They writhe at every wound and multiply And shudder into a heap of life that's made Thus vital from G.o.d's own vitality.
'T is hard to shrivel back a day of G.o.d's Once fixed for judgment: 't is as hard to change The peoples, when they rise beneath their loads And heave them from their backs with violent wrench To crush the oppressor; for that judgment-rod's The measure of this popular revenge.
Meanwhile, from Casa Guidi windows, we Beheld the armament of Austria flow Into the drowning heart of Tuscany: And yet none wept, none cursed, or, if 't was so, They wept and cursed in silence. Silently Our noisy Tuscans watched the invading foe; They had learnt silence. Pressed against the wall, And grouped upon the church-steps opposite, A few pale men and women stared at all.
G.o.d knows what they were feeling, with their white Constrained faces, they, so prodigal Of cry and gesture when the world goes right, Or wrong indeed. But here was depth of wrong, And here, still water; they were silent here; And through that sentient silence, struck along That measured tramp from which it stood out clear, Distinct the sound and silence, like a gong At midnight, each by the other awfuller,-- While every soldier in his cap displayed A leaf of olive. Dusty, bitter thing!
Was such plucked at Novara, is it said?
A cry is up in England, which doth ring The hollow world through, that for ends of trade And virtue and G.o.d's better wors.h.i.+pping, We henceforth should exalt the name of Peace And leave those rusty wars that eat the soul,-- Besides their clippings at our golden fleece.
I, too, have loved peace, and from bole to bole Of immemorial undeciduous trees Would write, as lovers use upon a scroll, The holy name of Peace and set it high Where none could pluck it down. On trees, I say,-- Not upon gibbets!--With the greenery Of dewy branches and the flowery May, Sweet mediation betwixt earth and sky Providing, for the shepherd's holiday.
Not upon gibbets! though the vulture leaves The bones to quiet, which he first picked bare.
Not upon dungeons! though the wretch who grieves And groans within less stirs the outer air Than any little field-mouse stirs the sheaves.
Not upon chain-bolts! though the slave's despair Has dulled his helpless miserable brain And left him blank beneath the freeman's whip To sing and laugh out idiocies of pain.
Nor yet on starving homes! where many a lip Has sobbed itself asleep through curses vain.
I love no peace which is not fellows.h.i.+p And which includes not mercy. I would have Rather the raking of the guns across The world, and shrieks against Heaven's architrave; Rather the struggle in the slippery fosse Of dying men and horses, and the wave Blood-bubbling.... Enough said!--by Christ's own cross, And by this faint heart of my womanhood, Such things are better than a Peace that sits Beside a hearth in self-commended mood, And takes no thought how wind and rain by fits Are howling out of doors against the good Of the poor wanderer. What! your peace admits Of outside anguish while it keeps at home?
I loathe to take its name upon my tongue.
'T is nowise peace: 't is treason, stiff with doom,-- 'T is gagged despair and inarticulate wrong,-- Annihilated Poland, stifled Rome, Dazed Naples, Hungary fainting 'neath the thong, And Austria wearing a smooth olive-leaf On her brute forehead, while her hoofs outpress The life from these Italian souls, in brief.
O Lord of Peace, who art Lord of Righteousness, Constrain the anguished worlds from sin and grief, Pierce them with conscience, purge them with redress, And give us peace which is no counterfeit!
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