Part 24 (1/2)

There is still another of these songs, in which the heart of womanhood speaks, though this time with a voice of pride and happiness.

THE DECORATION.

My love looks well under his helmet's crest; He went to war, and did not let them see His back, and so his wound is in the breast: For one he got, he struck and gave them three.

When he came back, I loved him, hurt so, best; He married me and loves me tenderly.

When he goes by, and people give him way, I thank G.o.d for my fortune every day; When he goes by he seems more grand and fair Than any crossed and ribboned cavalier: The cavalier grew up with his cross on, And I know how my darling's cross was won!

This poem, like that of La Livornese and La Donna Lombarda, is a vivid picture: it is a liberated city, and the streets are filled with jubilant people; the first victorious combats have taken place, and it is a wounded hero who pa.s.ses with his ribbon on his breast. As the fond crowd gives way to him, his young wife looks on him from her window with an exultant love, unshadowed by any possibility of harm:

Mi men a moglie e mi vuol tanto bene!

This is country and freedom to her,--this is strength which despots cannot break,--this is joy to which defeat and ruin can never come nigh! It might be any one of the sarcastic and quickwitted people talking politics in the streets of Rome in 1847, who sees the newly elected Senator--the head of the Roman munic.i.p.ality, and the legitimate mediator between Pope and people--as he pa.s.ses, and speaks to him in these lines the dominant feeling of the moment:

THE CARDINALS.

O Senator of Rome! if true and well You are reckoned honest, in the Vatican, Let it be yours His Holiness to tell, There are many Cardinals, and not one man.

They are made like lobsters, and, when they are dead, Like lobsters change their colors and turn red; And while they are living, with their backward gait Displace and tangle good Saint Peter's net.

An impulse of the time is strong again in the following Stornello,--a cry of reproach that seems to follow some recreant from a beleaguered camp of true comrades, and to utter the feeling of men who marched to battle through defection, and were strong chiefly in their just cause.

It bears the date of that fatal hour when the king of Naples, after a brief show of liberality, recalled his troops from Bologna, where they had been acting against Austria with the confederated forces of the other Italian states, and when every man lost to Italy was as an ebbing drop of her life's blood.

THE DESERTER.

(Bologna, May, 1818.)

Never did grain grow out of frozen earth; From the dead branch never did blossom start: If thou lovest not the land that gave thee birth, Within thy breast thou bear'st a frozen heart; If thou lovest not this land of ancient worth, To love aught else, say, traitor, how thou art!

To thine own land thou could'st not faithful be,-- Woe to the woman that puts faith in thee!

To him that trusteth in the recreant, woe!

Never from frozen earth did harvest grow: To her that trusteth a deserter, shame!

Out of the dead branch never blossom came.

And this song, so fine in its picturesque and its dramatic qualities, is not less true to the hope of the Venetians when they rose in 1848, and intrusted their destinies to Daniele Manin.

THE RING OF THE LAST DOGE.

I saw the widowed Lady of the Sea Crowned with corals and sea-weed and sh.e.l.ls, Who her long anguish and adversity Had seemed to drown in plays and festivals.

I said: ”Where is thine ancient fealty fled?-- Where is the ring with which Manin did wed His bride?” With tearful visage she: ”An eagle with two beaks tore it from me.

Suddenly I arose, and how it came I know not, but I heard my bridegroom's name.”

Poor widow! 't is not he. Yet he may bring-- Who knows?--back to the bride her long-lost ring.

The Venetians of that day dreamed that San Marco might live again, and the fineness and significance of the poem could not have been lost on the humblest in Venice, where all were quick to beauty and vividly remembered that the last Doge who wedded the sea was named, like the new President, Manin.

I think the Stornelli of the revolutionary period of 1848 have a peculiar value, because they embody, in forms of artistic perfection, the evanescent as well as the enduring qualities of popular feeling.