Part II

Hearing a little child sing in the street

I leant upon his music as a theme,

      Till it gave way beneath my heart's full beat,

Which tried at an exultant prophecy

      But dropped before the measure was complete—

Alas, for songs and hearts! O Tuscany,

      O Dante's Florence, is the type too plain?

Didst thou, too, only sing of liberty,

      As little children take up a high strain

With unintentioned voices, and break off

      To sleep upon their mothers' knees again?

Could'st thou not watch one hour? Then, sleep enough—

      That sleep may hasten manhood, and sustain

The faint pale spirit with some muscular stuff.

We thinkers, who have thought for thee and failed,—

      We hopers, who have hoped for thee and lost,—

We poets, wandered round by dreams, who hailed

      From this Atrides' roof (with lintel-post

Which still drips blood,—the worse part hath prevailed)

      The fire-voice of the beacons, to declare

Troy taken, sorrow ended,—cozened through

      A crimson sunset in a misty air,—

What now remains for such as we, to do?

      -God's judgments, peradventure, will He bare

To the roots of thunder, if we kneel and sue?

And saw ten thousand eyes of Florentines

      Flash back the triumph of the Lombard north,—

Saw fifty banners, freighted with the signs

      And exultations of the awakened earth,

Float on above the multitude in lines,

      Straight to the Pitti. So, the vision went.

And so, between those populous rough hands

      Raised in the sun, Duke Leopold outleant,

And took the patriot's oath, which henceforth stands

      Among the oaths of perjurers, eminent

To catch the lightnings ripened for these lands.

What need to swear? What need to boast thy blood

      Taintless of Austria, and thy heart unsold

Away from Florence? It was understood

      God made thee not too vigorous or too bold,

And men had patience with thy quiet mood,

      And women, pity, as they saw thee pace

Their festive streets with premature grey hairs:

      We turned the mild dejection of thy face

To princely meanings, took thy wrinkling cares

      For ruffling hopes, and called thee weak, not base.

Better to light the torches for more prayers

      And smoke the pale Madonnas at the shrine,

Being still "our poor Grand-duke," "our good Grand-duke,"

      "Who cannot help the Austrian in his line,"

Than write an oath upon a nation's book

      For men to spit at with scorn's blurring brine!

Who dares forgive what none can overlook?

Of towns and temples, which makes Italy,—

      I sigh amid the sighs which breathe a gust

Of dying century to century,

      Around us on the uneven crater-crust

Of the old worlds,—I bow my soul and knee,

      And sigh and do repent me of my fault

That ever I believed the man was true.

      These sceptred strangers shun the common salt,

And, therefore, when the general board's in view,

      They standing up to carve for blind and halt,

We should suspect the viands which ensue.

      And I repent that in this time and place,

Where all the corpse-lights of experience burn

      From Cæsar's and Lorenzo's festering race,

To illumine groping reasoners, I could learn

      No better counsel for a simple case

Than to put faith in princes, in my turn.

Heavens! had the death-piles of the ancient years

Flared up in vain before me? Knew I not

      What stench arises from their purple gears,

And how the sceptres witness whence they got

      Their briar-wood, crackling through the atmosphere's

Foul smoke, by princely perjuries, kept hot?

      Forgive me, ghosts of patriots,—Brutus, thou,

Who trailest downhill into life again

      Thy blood-weighed cloak, to indict me with thy slow

Reproachful eyes!—for being taught in vain

      That while the illegitimate Cæsars show

Of meaner stature than the first full strain,

      (Confessed incompetent to conquer Gaul)

They swoon as feebly and cross Rubicons

      As rashly as any Julius of them all.

Forgive, that I forgot the mind that runs

      Through absolute races, too unsceptical!

I saw the man among his little sons,

      His lips warm with their kisses while he swore,

And I, because I am a woman, I,

      Who felt my own child's coming life before

The prescience of my soul, and held faith high,

      I could not bear to think, whoever bore,

That lips, so warmed, could shape so cold a lie.

Again looked, and beheld a different sight.

      The Duke had fled before the people's shout

"Long live the Duke!" A people, to speak right,

      Should speak as soft as courtiers, lest a doubt

Turn gracious sovereign brows to curdled white.

Moreover that same dangerous shouting meant

Some gratitude for future favours, which

      Were only promised;—the Constituent

Implied;—the whole being subject to the hitch

      In motu proprios, very incident

To all these Czars, from Paul to Paulovitch.

      Whereat the people rose up in the dust

Of the Duke's flying feet, and shouted still,

      And loudly, only, this time, as was just,

Not "Live the Duke," who had fled, for good or ill

      But "Live the People," who remained and must,

The unrenounced and unrenounceable.

And bubbled in the cauldron of the street!

      How the young blustered, nor the old recoiled,

And what a thunderous stir of tongues and feet

      Trod flat the palpitating bells, and foiled

The joy-guns of their echo, shattering it!

      How they pulled down the Duke's arms every where!

How they set up new café-signs, to show

      Where patriots might sip ices in pure air—

(Yet the fresh paint smelt somewhat.) To and fro

      How marched the civic guard, and stopped to stare

When boys broke windows in a civic glow.

      How rebel songs were sung to loyal tunes,

And the pope cursed, in ecclesiastic metres!

      How all the Circoli grew large as moons,

And all the speakers, moonstruck! thankful—greeters

      Of prospects which struck poor the ducal boons,

A mere free press, and chambers!—frank repeaters

      Of great Guerazzi's praises.... "There's a man

The father of the land!—who, truly great,

      Takes off that national disgrace and ban,

The farthing tax upon our Florence-gate,

      And saves Italia as he only can."

How all the nobles fled, and would not wait,

      Because they were most noble! which being so,

How the mob vowed to burn their palaces,

      Because they were too free to have leave to go.

How grown men raged at Austria's wickedness,

      And smoked,—while fifty striplings in a row

Marched straight to Piedmont for the wrong's redress!

      Who says we failed in duty, we who wore

Black velvet like Italian democrats,

      Who slashed our sleeves like patriots, nor forswore

The true republic in the form of hats?

      We chased the archbishop from the duomo door—

We chalked the walls with bloody caveats

      Against all tyrants. If we did not fight

Exactly, we fired muskets up the void,

      To show that victory was ours of right.

We met, discussed in every place, self-buoyed

      Except, perhaps, i' the chambers, day and night:

We proved that all the poor should be employed,

      And yet the rich not worked for anywise,—

Pay certified, yet payers abrogated,

      Full work secured, yet liabilities

To over-work excluded,—not one bated

      Of all our holidays, that still, at twice

Or thrice a-week, are moderately rated.

      We proved that Austria was dislodged, or would

Or should be, and that Tuscany in arms

      Should, would, dislodge her, in high hardihood!

And yet, to leave our piazzas, shops, and farms,

      For the bare sake of fighting, was not good.

We proved that also—"Did we carry charms

      Against being killed ourselves, that we should rush

On killing others? What! desert herewith

      Our wives and mothers!—was that duty? Tush!"

At which we shook the sword within the sheath,

      Like heroes—only louder! and the flush

Ran up our cheek to meet the victor's wreath.

      Nay; what we proved, we shouted—how we shouted,

(Especially the little boys did) planting

      That tree of liberty whose fruit is doubted

Because the roots are not of nature's granting—

      A tree of good and evil!—none, without it,

Grow gods!-alas, and, with it, men were wanting.

O holy rights of nations! If I speak

      These bitter things against the jugglery

Of days that in your names proved blind and weak,

      It is that tears are bitter. When we see

The brown skulls grin at death in churchyards bleak,

      We do not cry, "This Yorick is too light,"—

For death grows deathlier with that mouth he makes.

      So with my mocking. Bitter things I write,

Because my soul is bitter for your sakes,

      O freedom! O my Florence!

Do greatly in a universe that breaks

      And burns, must ever know before they do.

Courage and patience are but sacrifice;

      A sacrifice is offered for and to

Something conceived of. Each man pays a price

      For what himself counts precious, whether true

Or false the appreciation it implies.

      Here, was no knowledge, no conception, nought!

Desire was absent, that provides great deeds

      From out the greatness of prevenient thought;

And action, action, like a flame that needs

      A steady breath and fuel, being caught

Up, like a burning reed from other reeds,

      Flashed in the empty and uncertain air,

Then wavered, then went out. Behold, who blames

      A crooked course, when not a goal is there,

To round the fervid striving of the games?

      An ignorance of means may minister

To greatness, but an ignorance of aims

      Makes it impossible to be great at all.

So, with our Tuscans! Let none dare to say,

      Here virtue never can be national,

Here fortitude can never cut its way

      Between the Austrian muskets, out of thrall.

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 the mere draping of a graceful stuff

About a statue, broidered at the hem,—

      Not the mere trilling on an opera stage,

Of libertà' 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 bloody dews

Of a new morning, rising up agreed

      And bold, will want no Saxon souls or thews,

To sweep their piazzas clear of Austria's breed.

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 took 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 multitudinous,

Stept by an opposite wind, as loudly shook.

      Recall the mild Archbishop to his house,

To bless the people with his frightened look,

For he shall not be hanged yet, we intend.

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 arıns; doff your Phrygian caps; and mend

The pavement of the piazzas broke into

      By the bare poles of freedom! Smooth the way

For the Duke's carriage, lest his highness sigh

      "Here trees of liberty grew yesterday."

Long live the Duke!—How roared the cannonry,

      How rocked each campanile, and through a spray

Of nosegays, wreaths, and kerchiefs, tossed on high,

      How marched the civic guard, the people still

Shouting—especially the little 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 that noise!

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.

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,

Hush, hush," 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 thousands. 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,

Calm as a sculptured Fate, and terrible!

      As some smooth river which hath overflowed,

Doth 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 the famed city adorned by architect

And carver, nor of Beauties live and warm

      Scared at the casements,—all, straightforward eyes

And faces, held as steadfast as their swords,

      And cognisant 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, circumvents.

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!

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 God. 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 God's own vitality.

      'Tis hard to shrivel back a day of God's

Once fixed for judgment: 'tis as hard to change

      The people's, 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.

Beheld the armament of Austria flow

      Into the drowning heart of Tuscany.

And yet none wept, none cursed; or, if 'twas 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.

God 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

Tolled upon midnight,-each made awfuller;

      While every soldier in his cap displayed

A leaf of olive. Dusty, bitter thing!

      Was such plucked at Novara, is it said?

The hollow world through, that for ends of trade

And virtue, and God's better worshipping,

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 should pluck it down. On trees, I say,—

      Not upon gibbets!— With the greenery

Of dewy branches and the flowery May,

      Sweet mediation 'twixt the earth and sky,

Providing, for the shepherd's holiday!

      Not upon gibbets! though the vulture leaves

Some quiet to the bones he first picked bare.

      Not upon dungeons! though the wretch who grieves

And groans within, stirs not the outer air

      As much as little field-mice stir 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 fellowship,

      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 the faint heart of my womanhood,

Such things are better than a Peace which sits

      Beside the 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 sits at home?

I loathe to take its name upon my tongue

      It is no peace. 'Tis treason, stiff with doom,

'Tis 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!

From Casa Guidi windows? Shut them straight;

And let us sit down by the folded door

      And veil our saddened faces, and so, wait

What next the judgment-heavens make ready for.

      I have grown weary of these windows. Sights

Come thick enough and clear enough with thought,

      Without the sunshine; souls have inner lights:

And since the Grand-duke has come back and brought

      This army of the North which thus requites

His filial South, we leave him to be taught.

His South, too, has learnt something certainly,

Whereof the practice will bring profit soon;

      And peradventure other eyes may see,

From Casa Guidi windows, what is done

      Or undone. Whatsoever deeds they be,

Pope Pius will be glorified in none.

Some heights of sorrow. Peter's rock, so named,

      Shall lure no vessel, any more, to drop

Among the breakers. Peter's chair is shamed

      Like any vulgar throne the nations lop

To pieces for their firewood unreclaimed;

      And, when it burns too, we shall see as well

In Italy as elsewhere. Let it burn.

      The cross, accounted still adorable,

Is Christ's cross only!—if the thief's would earn

      Some stealthy genuflexions, we rebel;

And here the impenitent thief's has had its turn,

      As God knows; and the people on their knees

Scoff and toss back the croziers, stretched like yokes

      To press their heads down lower by degrees.

So Italy, by means of these last strokes,

      Escapes the danger which preceded these,

Of leaving captured hands in cloven oaks...

      Of leaving very souls within the buckle

Whence bodies struggled outward... of supposing

      That freemen may like bondsmen kneel and truckle,

And then stand up as usual, without losing

      An inch of stature.

                                                      Those whom she-wolves suckle

Will bite as wolves do, in the grapple-closing

Of adverse interests: this, at last, is known,

(Thank Pius for the lesson) that albeit,

      Among the Popedom's hundred heads of stone

Which blink down on you from the roof's retreat

      In Siena's tiger-striped cathedral, Joan

And Borgia 'mid their fellows you may greet,

      A harlot and a devil, you will see

Not a man, still less angel, grandly set

      With open soul, to render man more free.

The fishers are still thinking of the net,

      And if not thinking of the hook too, we

Are counted somewhat deeply in their debt:

      But that's a rare case-so, by hook and crook

They take the advantage, agonizing Christ

      By rustier nails than those of Cedron's brook,

I' the people's body very cheaply priced;

      Quoting high priesthood out of Holy book,

And buying death-fields with the sacrificed.

Ye take most vainly. Through Heaven's lifted gate

      The priestly ephod in sole glory swept,

When Christ ascended, entered in, and sate

      With victor face sublimely overwept,

At Deity's right hand, to mediate,

      He alone, He for ever. On his breast

The Urim and the Thummim, fed with fire

      From the full Godhead, flicker with the unrest

Of human, pitiful heartbeats. Come up higher,

      All Christians! Levi's tribe is dispossest!

That solitary alb ye shall admire,

      But not cast lots for. The last chrism, poured right,

Was on that Head, and poured for burial

      And not for domination in men's sight.

What are these churches? The old temple wall

      Doth overlook them juggling with the sleight

Of surplice, candlestick, and altar-pall.

      East church and west church, ay, north church and south,

Rome's church and England's—let them all repent,

      And make concordats 'twixt their soul and mouth,

Succeed St. Paul by working at the tent,

      Become infallible guides by speaking truth,

And excommunicate their own pride that bent

      And cramped the souls of men.

                                                                                          Why, even here,

Priestcraft burns out; the twined linen blazes,

      Not, like asbestos, to grow white and clear,

But all to perish!—while the fire-smell raises

      To life some swooning spirits who, last year,

Lost breath and heart in these church-stifled places.

      Why, almost, through this Pius, we believed

The priesthood could be an honest thing, he smiled

      So saintly while our corn was being sheaved

For his own granaries. Showing now defiled

      His hireling hands, a better help's achieved

Than if he blessed us shepherd-like and mild.

      False doctrine, strangled by its own amen,

Dies in the throat of all this nation. Who

      Will speak a pope's name, as they rise again?

What woman or what child will count him true?

      What dreamer praise him with the voice or pen?

What man fight for him?—Pius has his due.

Set down thy people's faults:—set down the want

      Of soul-conviction; set down aims dispersed,

And incoherent means, and valour scant

      Because of scanty faith, and schisms accursed

That wrench these brother-hearts from covenant

      With freedom and each other. Set down this

And this, and see to overcome it when

      The seasons bring the fruits thou wilt not miss

If wary. Let no cry of patriot men

      Distract thee from the stern analysis

Of masses who cry only: keep thy ken

      Clear as thy soul is virtuous. Heroes' blood

Splashed up against thy noble brow in Rome.—

      Let such not blind thee to the interlude

Which was not also holy, yet did come

      'Twixt sacramental actions:-brotherhood,

Despised even there,—and something of the doom

      Of Remus, in the trenches. Listen now—

Rossi died silent near where Cæsar died.

      He did not say, "My Brutus, is it thou?"

Instead, rose Italy and testified,

      "'Twas I, and I am Brutus,—I avow."

At which the whole world's laugh of scorn replied,

      "A poor maimed copy of Brutus!"

                                                                                          Too much like,

Indeed, to be so unlike. Too unskilled

      At Philippi and the honest battle-pike,

To be so skilful where a man is killed

      Near Pompey's statue, and the daggers strike

At unawares i' the throat. Was thus fulfilled

      An omen of great Michel Angelo,—

When Marcus Brutus he conceived complete,

      And strove to hurl him out by blow on blow

Upon the marble, at Art's thunderheat,

      Till haply some pre-shadow rising slow

Of what his Italy would fancy meet

      To be called Brutus, straight his plastic hand

Fell back before his prophet soul, and left

      A fragment... a maimed Brutus,—but more grand

Than this, so named of Rome, was!

                                                                                                      Let thy weft

      Be of one woof and warp, Mazzini!—stand

With no man of a spotless fame bereft—

      Not for Italia! Neither stand apart,

No, not for the republic!—from those pure

      Brave men who hold the level of thy heart

In patriot truth, as lover and as doer,

      Albeit they will not follow where thou art

As extreme theorist. Trust and distrust fewer;

      And so bind strong and keep unstained the cause

Which, at God's signal, war-trumps newly blown

      Shall yet annuntiate to the world's applause.

A Fair-going world. Imperial England draws

The flowing ends of the earth, from Fez, Canton,

      Delhi and Stockholm, Athens and Madrid,

The Russias and the vast Americas,

      As a queen gathers in her robes amid

Her golden cincture,—isles, peninsulas,

      Capes, continents, far inland countries hid

By jaspar sands and hills of chrysopras,

      All trailing in their splendours through the door

Of the new Crystal Palace. Every nation,

      To every other nation, strange of yore,

Shall face to face give civic salutation,

      And hold up in a proud right hand before

That congress, the best work which she could fashion

      By her best means—"These corals, will you please

To match against your oaks? They grow as fast

      Within my wilderness of purple seas."—

"This diamond stared upon me as I passed

      (As a live god's eye from a marble frieze)

Along a dark of diamonds. Is it classed?"—

      "I wove these stuffs so subtly, that the gold

Swims to the surface of the silk, like cream,

      And curdles to fair patterns. Ye behold!"—

"These delicated muslins rather seem

      Than be, you think? Nay, touch them and be bold,

Though such veiled Chakhi's face in Hafiz' dream."—

      "These carpets—you walk slow on them like kings,

Inaudible like spirits, while your foot

      Dips deep in velvet roses and such things."—

"Even Apollonius might commend this flute.

      The music, winding through the stops, upsprings

To make the player very rich. Compute."—

      "Here's goblet-glass, to take in with your wine

The very sun its grapes were ripened under.

      Drink light and juice together, and each fine."—

"This model of a steam-ship moves your wonder?

      You should behold it crushing down the brine,

Like a blind Jove who feels his way with thunder."—

      "Here's sculpture! Ah, we live too! Why not throw

Our life into our marbles! Art has place

      For other artists after Angelo."—

"I tried to paint out here a natural face—

      For nature includes Raffael, as we know,

Not Raffael nature. Will it help my case?"—

      "Methinks you will not match this steel of ours!"—

"Nor you this porcelain! One might think the clay

      Retained in it the larvæ of the flowers,

They bud so, round the cup, the old spring way."—

      "Nor you these carven woods, where birds in bowers,

With twisting snakes and climbing cupids, play."

Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent.—

      What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest?

Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spent

      In handwork only? Have you nothing best,

Which generous souls may perfect and present,

      And He shall thank the givers for? No light

Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor,

      Who sit in darkness when it is not night?

No cure for wicked children? Christ,—no cure!

      No help for women sobbing out of sight

Because men made the laws? No brothel-lure

      Burnt out by popular lightnings?—Hast thou found

No remedy, my England, for such woes?

No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound,

No entrance for the exiled? No repose,

      Russia, for knouted Poles worked underground,

And gentle ladies bleached among the snows?—

      No mercy for the slave, America?—

No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France?—

      Alas, great nations have great shames, I say.

No pity, O world, no tender utterance

      Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way

To poor Italia baffled by mischance?—

      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,—a justice to be done.

      So, prosper!

Meantime, her patriot dead have benizon!

      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 encumber

      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 god made wroth,

      Against each piled injustice. Ay, the least

Dead for Italia, not in vain has died,

      However vainly, ere life's struggle ceased,

To mad dissimilar ends they swerved aside.

      Each grave her nationality has pieced

By its own noble 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 sea-weeds 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.

Well he remembers that she could not choose.

      A memorable grave! Another is

At Genoa, where 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 kingship covered what was base and bleared

      With treason, he went out an exile, yea,

An exiled patriot! Let him be revered.

And if he lived not all so, as one spoke,

      The sin pass softly with the passing 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 God 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, 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?—Yet, be it understood,

Life throbs in noble 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 passage 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.

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 shine

      Brighter than elsewhere. Now, look straight before,

And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine,

      And from thy 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 God'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 assume

      That, less than we have, thou hast learnt of God.

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 God's witness;—that the elemental

      New springs of life are gushing everywhere,

To cleanse the water courses, 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?

And we... despond we for the future, though

      Posterity is smiling at our knees,

Convicting us of folly? Let us go—

      We will trust God. 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.

The self same cherub faces which emboss

The rail, lean inward to the mercy-seat.

↑ They show at Verona an empty trough of stone as the tomb of Juliet↑ In the Sagrestia Nuovo, where the statues of Day and Night, Dawn and Twilight, recline on the tombs of Giuliano de' Medici, third son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Lorenzo of Urbino, his grandson. Strozzi's epigram on the Night, with Michel Angelo's rejoinder, is well known.↑ This mocking task was set by Pietro, the unworthy successor of Lorenzo the Magnificent.↑ Savonarola was burnt in martyrdom for his testimony against Papal corruptions as early as March, 1498: and, as late as our own day, it is a custom in Florence to strew violets on the pavement when he suffered, in grateful recognition of the anniversary.↑ See his description of the plague in Florence.↑ Charles of Anjou, whom, in his passage through Florence, Olmabue allowed to see this picture while yet in his "Bottega." The populace followed the royal visitor, and in the universal delight and admiration, the quarter of the city In which the artist lived was called "Borgo Allegri." The picture was carried in a triumph to the church and deposited there.↑ How Cimabue found Giotto, the shepherd-boy, sketching a ram of his flock upon a stone, is a pretty story told by Vasari, who also relates how the elder artist Margheritone died "infastidito" of the successes of the new school.↑ Since when the constitutional concessions have been complete in Tuscany, as all the world knows. The event breaks in upon the meditation, and is too fast for prophecy in these strange times.—E. B. B.↑ The Florentines, to whom the Ravennese denied the body of Dante which was asked of them in a "late remorse of love," have given a cenotaph to their divine poet in this church. Something less than a grave!↑ In allusion to Mr. Kirkup's well-known discovery of Giotto's fresco-portrait of Dante.↑ Galileo's villa near Florence is built on an eminence called Bellosguardo.↑ Referring to the well-known opening passage of the Agamemnon of Æschylus.↑ Philostratus relates of Apollonius that he objected to the musical instrument of Linus the Rhodian, its incompetence to enrich and beautify. The history of music in our day, would, upon the former point, sufficiently confute the philosopher.