XXVIII

Breathe back the deep breath of their old delight,

To swell the Italian banner just unfurled.

      Help, lands of Europe! for, if Austria fight,

The drums will bar your slumber. Who had curled

      The laurel for your thousand artists' brows,

If these Italian hands had planted none?

      And who can sit down idle in the house,

Nor hear appeals from Buonarotti's stone

      And Raffael's canvas, rousing and to rouse?

Where's Poussin's master? Gallic Avignon

      Bred Laura, and Vaucluse's fount has stirred

The heart of France too strongly,—as it lets

      Its little stream out, like a wizard's bird

Which bounds upon its emerald wings, and wets

      The rocks on each side—that she should not gird

Her loins with Charlemagne's sword, when foes beset

      The country of her Petrarch. Spain may well

Be minded how from Italy she caught,

      To mingle with her tinkling Moorish bell,

A fuller cadence and a subtler thought;

      And even the New World, the receptacle

Of freemen, may send glad men, as it ought,

      To greet Vespucci Amerigo's door;

While England claims, by trump of poetry,

      Verona, Venice, the Ravenna shore,

And dearer holds her Milton's Fiesole

      Than Malvern with a sunset running o'er.