Volume IV Part 11 (2/2)

O gracious nations, give some ear to me!

You all go to your Fair, and I am one Who at the roadside of humanity Beseech your alms,--G.o.d's justice to be done.

So, prosper!

In the name of Italy, Meantime, her patriot Dead have benison.

They only have done well; and, what they did Being perfect, it shall triumph. Let them slumber: No king of Egypt in a pyramid Is safer from oblivion, though he number Full seventy cerements for a coverlid.

These Dead be seeds of life, and shall enc.u.mber The sad heart of the land until it loose The clammy clods and let out the Spring-growth In beatific green through every bruise.

The tyrant should take heed to what he doth, Since every victim-carrion turns to use, And drives a chariot, like a G.o.d made wroth, Against each piled injustice. Ay, the least, Dead for Italia, not in vain has died; Though many vainly, ere life's struggle ceased, To mad dissimilar ends have swerved aside; Each grave her nationality has pieced By its own majestic breadth, and fortified And pinned it deeper to the soil. Forlorn Of thanks be, therefore, no one of these graves!

Not Hers,--who, at her husband's side, in scorn, Outfaced the whistling shot and hissing waves, Until she felt her little babe unborn Recoil, within her, from the violent staves And bloodhounds of the world,--at which, her life Dropt inwards from her eyes and followed it Beyond the hunters. Garibaldi's wife And child died so. And now, the seaweeds fit Her body, like a proper shroud and coif, And murmurously the ebbing waters grit The little pebbles while she lies interred In the sea-sand. Perhaps, ere dying thus, She looked up in his face (which never stirred From its clenched anguish) as to make excuse For leaving him for his, if so she erred.

He well remembers that she could not choose.

A memorable grave! Another is At Genoa. There, a king may fitly lie, Who, bursting that heroic heart of his At lost Novara, that he could not die (Though thrice into the cannon's eyes for this He plunged his shuddering steed, and felt the sky Reel back between the fire-shocks), stripped away The ancestral ermine ere the smoke had cleared, And, naked to the soul, that none might say His kings.h.i.+p covered what was base and bleared With treason, went out straight an exile, yea, An exiled patriot. Let him be revered.

Yea, verily, Charles Albert has died well; And if he lived not all so, as one spoke, The sin pa.s.s softly with the pa.s.sing-bell; For he was shriven, I think, in cannon-smoke, And, taking off his crown, made visible A hero's forehead. Shaking Austria's yoke He shattered his own hand and heart. ”So best,”

His last words were upon his lonely bed, I do not end like popes and dukes at least-- ”Thank G.o.d for it.” And now that he is dead, Admitting it is proved and manifest That he was worthy, with a discrowned head, To measure heights with patriots, let them stand Beside the man in his Oporto shroud, And each vouchsafe to take him by the hand, And kiss him on the cheek, and say aloud,-- ”Thou, too, hast suffered for our native land!

My brother, thou art one of us! be proud.”

Still, graves, when Italy is talked upon.

Still, still, the patriot's tomb, the stranger's hate.

Still Niobe! still fainting in the sun, By whose most dazzling arrows violate Her beauteous offspring perished! has she won Nothing but garlands for the graves, from Fate?

Nothing but death-songs?--Yes, be it understood Life throbs in n.o.ble Piedmont! while the feet Of Rome's clay image, dabbled soft in blood, Grow flat with dissolution and, as meet, Will soon be shovelled off like other mud, To leave the pa.s.sage free in church and street.

And I, who first took hope up in this song, Because a child was singing one ... behold, The hope and omen were not, haply, wrong!

Poets are soothsayers still, like those of old Who studied flights of doves; and creatures young And tender, mighty meanings may unfold.

The sun strikes, through the windows, up the floor; Stand out in it, my own young Florentine, Not two years old, and let me see thee more!

It grows along thy amber curls, to s.h.i.+ne Brighter than elsewhere. Now, look straight before, And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine, And from my soul, which fronts the future so, With unabashed and unabated gaze, Teach me to hope for, what the angels know When they smile clear as thou dost. Down G.o.d's ways With just alighted feet, between the snow And snowdrops, where a little lamb may graze, Thou hast no fear, my lamb, about the road, Albeit in our vain-glory we a.s.sume That, less than we have, thou hast learnt of G.o.d.

Stand out, my blue-eyed prophet!--thou, to whom The earliest world-day light that ever flowed, Through Casa Guidi Windows chanced to come!

Now shake the glittering nimbus of thy hair, And be G.o.d's witness that the elemental New springs of life are gus.h.i.+ng everywhere To cleanse the watercourses, and prevent all Concrete obstructions which infest the air!

That earth's alive, and gentle or ungentle Motions within her, signify but growth!-- The ground swells greenest o'er the labouring moles.

Howe'er the uneasy world is vexed and wroth, Young children, lifted high on parent souls, Look round them with a smile upon the mouth, And take for music every bell that tolls; (WHO said we should be better if like these?) But _we_ sit murmuring for the future though Posterity is smiling on our knees, Convicting us of folly. Let us go-- We will trust G.o.d. The blank interstices Men take for ruins, He will build into With pillared marbles rare, or knit across With generous arches, till the fane's complete.

This world has no perdition, if some loss.

Such cheer I gather from thy smiling, Sweet!

The self-same cherub-faces which emboss The Vail, lean inward to the Mercy-seat.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] See the opening pa.s.sage of the ”Agamemnon” of aeschylus.

[13] Philostratus relates of Apollonius how he objected to the musical instrument of Linus the Rhodian that it could not enrich or beautify. The history of music in our day would satisfy the philosopher on one point at least.

POEMS BEFORE CONGRESS

PREFACE.

These poems were written under the pressure of the events they indicate, after a residence in Italy of so many years that the present triumph of great principles is heightened to the writer's feelings by the disastrous issue of the last movement, witnessed from ”Casa Guidi Windows” in 1849. Yet, if the verses should appear to English readers too pungently rendered to admit of a patriotic respect to the English sense of things, I will not excuse myself on such grounds, nor on the ground of my attachment to the Italian people and my admiration of their heroic constancy and union. What I have written has simply been written because I love truth and justice _quand meme_,--”more than Plato” and Plato's country, more than Dante and Dante's country, more even than Shakespeare and Shakespeare's country.

And if patriotism means the flattery of one's nation in every case, then the patriot, take it as you please, is merely the courtier which I am not, though I have written ”Napoleon III. in Italy.” It is time to limit the significance of certain terms, or to enlarge the significance of certain things. Nationality is excellent in its place; and the instinct of self-love is the root of a man, which will develop into sacrificial virtues. But all the virtues are means and uses; and, if we hinder their tendency to growth and expansion, we both destroy them as virtues, and degrade them to that rankest species of corruption reserved for the most n.o.ble organizations. For instance,--non-intervention in the affairs of neighbouring states is a high political virtue; but non-intervention does not mean, pa.s.sing by on the other side when your neighbour falls among thieves,--or Phariseeism would recover it from Christianity. Freedom itself is virtue, as well as privilege; but freedom of the seas does not mean piracy, nor freedom of the land, brigandage; nor freedom of the senate, freedom to cudgel a dissident member; nor freedom of the press, freedom to calumniate and lie. So, if patriotism be a virtue indeed, it cannot mean an exclusive devotion to our country's interests,--for that is only another form of devotion to personal interests, family interests, or provincial interests, all of which, if not driven past themselves, are vulgar and immoral objects. Let us put away the Little Peddlingtonism unworthy of a great nation, and too prevalent among us. If the man who does not look beyond this natural life is of a somewhat narrow order, what must be the man who does not look beyond his own frontier or his own sea?

I confess that I dream of the day when an English statesman shall arise with a heart too large for England; having courage in the face of his countrymen to a.s.sert of some suggested policy,--”This is good for your trade; this is necessary for your domination: but it will vex a people hard by; it will hurt a people farther off; it will profit nothing to the general humanity: therefore, away with it!--it is not for you or for me.” When a British minister dares speak so, and when a British public applauds him speaking, then shall the nation be glorious, and her praise, instead of exploding from within, from loud civic mouths, come to her from without, as all worthy praise must, from the alliances she has fostered and the populations she has saved.

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