Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Casa Guidi Windows 2 lyrics

I wrote a meditation and a dream,  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? Couldst thou not watch one hour? then, sleep enough—  That sleep may hasten manhood and sustain The faint pale spirit with some muscular stuff. But we, who cannot slumber as thou dost,  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? From Casa Guidi windows I looked forth,  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. Why swear at all, thou false Duke Leopold?  What need to swear? What need to boast thy blood Unspoilt 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.  Nay, better 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? For me, I do repent me in this dust  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 these old worlds,—I bow my soul and knee. Absolve me, patriots, of my woman's 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 And they stand up to carve for blind and halt,  The wise suspect the viands which ensue. I much repent that, in this time and place  Where many corpse-lights of experience burn From Cæsar's and Lorenzo's festering race,  To enlighten groping reasoners, I could learn No better counsel for a simple case  Than to put faith in princes, in my turn. Had all the d**h-piles of the ancient years  Flared up in vain before me? knew I not What stench arises from some 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 which runs Through absolute races, too unsceptical!  I saw the man among his little sons, His lips were warm with 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. From Casa Guidi windows I looked out,  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, Must speak as soft as courtiers, lest a doubt  Should curdle brows of gracious sovereigns, 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 ruler'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. Long live the people! How they lived! and boiled  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 down they pulled the Duke's arms everywhere!  How up they set new café-signs, to show Where patriots might sip ices in pure air—  (The fresh paint smelling 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 bishops 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 Liberals vowed to burn their palaces,  Because free Tuscans were not free 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!  You say 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 air  To show that victory was ours of right. We met, had free discussion everywhere  (Except perhaps i' the Chambers) day and night. We proved the poor should be employed, ... that's fair,—  And yet the rich not worked for anywise,— Pay certified, yet payers abrogated,—  Full work secured, yet liabilities To overwork 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, ending the old feud; And yet, to leave our piazzas, shops, and farms,  For the simple sake of fighting, was not good— We proved that also. “Did we carry charms  Against being k**ed ourselves, that we should rush On k**ing 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 the cheek to meet the future wreath.  Nay, what we proved, we shouted—how we shouted (Especially the boys did), boldly 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 are wanting! O holy knowledge, holy liberty,  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 d**h in churchyards bleak, We do not cry “This Yorick is too light,”  For d**h grows d**hlier 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! Men who might  Do greatly in a universe that breaks And burns, must ever know before they do.  Courage and patience are but sacrifice; And 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. But here,—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 a 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 just the draping of a graceful stuff  About a statue, broidered at the hem,— Not just the 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 some new morning, rising up agreed And bold, will want no Saxon souls or thews  To sweep their piazzas clear of Austria's breed. Alas, alas! it was not so this time.  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 takes 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,  Swept by an opposite wind, as loudly shook. Call back the mild archbishop to his house,  To bless the people with his frightened look,— He shall not yet be hanged, you comprehend!  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 arms, doff your Phrygian caps, and men  The pavement of the piazzas broke into By barren poles of freedom: smooth the way  For the ducal carriage, lest his highness sigh “Here trees of liberty grew yesterday!”  “Long live the Duke!”—how roared the cannonry, How rocked the bell-towers, and through thickening spray  Of nosegays, wreaths, and kerchiefs tossed on high, How marched the civic guard, the people still  Being good at shouts, especially the 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 so much noise! You think he came back instantly, with thanks  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. From Casa Guidi windows gazing, then,  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,  Be still,” 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 thousand; 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,  Like a sculptured Fate serene and terrible. As some smooth river which has overflowed  Will 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 Florence city adorned by architect  And carver, or of Beauties live and warm Scared at the casements,—all, straightforward eyes  And faces, held as steadfast as their swords, And cognizant 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! And yet, they are no prophets though they come:  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 k** worms sooner with a garden-spade  Than you k** 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. 'T is hard to shrivel back a day of God's  Once fixed for judgment: 't is as hard to change The peoples, 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. Meanwhile, from Casa Guidi windows, we  Beheld the armament of Austria flow Into the drowning heart of Tuscany:  And yet none wept, none cursed, or, if 't was 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 Constrainèd 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  At midnight, each by the other awfuller,— While every soldier in his cap displayed  A leaf of olive. Dusty, bitter thing! Was such plucked at Novara, is it said? A cry is up in England, which doth ring  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 could pluck it down. On trees, I say,—  Not upon gibbets!—With the greenery Of dewy branches and the flowery May,  Sweet mediation betwixt earth and sky Providing, for the shepherd's holiday.  Not upon gibbets! though the vulture leaves The bones to quiet, which he first picked bare.  Not upon dungeons! though the wretch who grieves And groans within less stirs the outer air  Than any little field-mouse stirs 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 this faint heart of my womanhood, Such things are better than a Peace that sits  Beside a 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 keeps at home? I loathe to take its name upon my tongue.  'T is nowise peace: 't is treason, stiff with doom,— 'T is 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! But wherefore should we look out any more  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 too weary of these windows. Sights Come thick enough and clear enough in 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.  Record that gain, Mazzini!—it shall top 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 crosiers 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 s**le 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,—  And quote high priesthood out of Holy book, While buying d**h-fields with the sacrificed. Priests, priests,—there's no such name!—God's own, except  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 heart-beats. 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 Saint Paul by working at the tent, Become infallible guides by speaking truth,  And excommunicate their pride that bent And cramped the souls of men.   Why, even here Priestcraft burns out, the twinèd 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 they 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 takes his due. Record that gain, Mazzini!—Yes, but first  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 an*lysis  Of ma**es 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 an 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?”  But Italy unquestioned testified “I k**ed him! 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 unsk**ed At Philippi and the honest battle-pike,  To be so skilful where a man is k**ed Near Pompey's statue, and the daggers strike  At unawares i' the throat. Was thus fulfilled An omen once of 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 at Rome, was!   Let thy weft Present one woof and warp, Mazzini! Stand  With no man hankering for a dagger's heft, No, not for Italy!—nor 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 (God's sign granted) war-trumps newly blown Shall yet annunciate to the world's applause. But now, the world is busy; it has grown  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 if a queen drew in her robes amid Her golden cincture,—isles, peninsulas,  Capes, continents, far inland countries hid By jasper-sands and hills of chrysopras,  All trailing in their splendours through the door Of the gorgeous Crystal Palace. Every nation,  To every other nation strange of yore, Gives face to face the civic salutation,  And holds up in a proud right hand before That congress the best work which she can 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 pa**ed  (As a live god's eye from a marble frieze) Along a dark of diamonds. Is it cla**ed?”—  “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 delicatest 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-gla**, 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 steamship 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 dream 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.” O Magi of the east and of the west,  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 four  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 For 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,—God'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 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;  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 kingship 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** softly with the pa**ing-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, 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 d**h-songs?—Yes, 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 pa**age 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 shine 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 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 a**ume 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 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 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. Such cheer I gather from thy smiling, Sweet!  The self-same cherub-faces which emboss The Vail, lean inward to the Mercy-seat.