XXII

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.