of the world of thy young days:
They are gone! They have disappear'd amidst the roar Then to Jehovah raise
Of the forsaken world; and never more,
Whether they live, or die with all earth's life,
Now near its last, can aught restore
Blessed are the dead
Who die in the Lord!
To die! in youth to die;
And happier in that doom,
Than to behold the universal tomb
Which I
dearest were they free,
ach tyrant's will:
-the German, Frank, and Hun,
nd on the imperial hill
if the deeds done
arians, there awaits the new,
e Palatine, while, lost and won,
et lies bleeding; and the hue
sacrifice and Roman slaughter
s the clotted air, of late so blue,
epens into red the saffron water
Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest,
And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,
Vow'd to their god, have shrieking tled, and ceased
Their ministry: the nations take their prey,
Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast
And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they
Are; these but gorge the flesh and lap the gore
Of the departed, and then go their way;
But those, the human savages, explore
All paths of torture, and insatiate yet
With Ugolino hunger prowl for more.
Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set;6
The chiefless army of the dead, which late
Beneath the traitor prince's banner met,
Hath left its leader's ashes at the gate;
Had but the royal rebel lived, perchance
Thou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate. Oh! Rome, the spoiler of the spoil of France, From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never
So long hath press'd, and the cold marble stone,
Thou sole pure seraph of my earliest love,
Love so ineffable, and so alone,
That nought on earth could more my bosom move,
And meeting thee in heaven was but to meet
That without which my soul, like the arkless dove,
Had wander'd still in search of, nor her feet
Relieved her wing till found; without thy light
My paradise had still been incomplete. 2
Since my tenth sun gave summer to my sight
Thou wert my life, the essence of my thought,
Loved ere I knew the name of love, and bright
Still in these dim old eyes, now overwrought
With the world's war, and years, and banishment,
And tears for thee, by other woes untaught;
For mine is not a nature to be bent
By tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd; And though the long, long conflict hath been spent In vain, and never more, save when the cloud Which overhangs the Apennine, my mind's Pierces to fancy Florence, once so proud Of me, can I return, though but to die,
Unto my native soil, they have not yet
Quench'd the old exile's spirit, stern and high.
But the sun, though not overcast, must set,
And the night cometh; I am old in days,
And deeds, and contemplation, and have met
Destruction face to face in all his ways.
The world hath left me, what it found me-pure,
And if I have not gather'd yet its praise,
I sought it not by any baser lure;
Man wrongs, and Time avenges, and my name
May form a monument not all obscure,
Though such was not my ambition's end or aim,
To add to the vain-glorious list of those
Who dabble in the pettiness of fame,
And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows
Their sail, and deem it glory to be class'd
With conquerors, and virtue's other foes,
In bloody chronicles of ages past.
I would have had my Florence great and free: 3
Oh Florence! Florence! unto me thou wast
Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He
Wept over: « but thou wouldst not;» as the bird
Gathers its young, I would have gather'd thee
Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard
My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce, Against the breast that cherish'd thee was stirr'd Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce, And doom this body forfeit to the fire. Alas! how bitter is his country's curse To him who for that country would expire, But did not merit to expire by her, And loves her, loves her even in her ire. The day may come when she will cease to err, The day may come she would be proud to have The dust she dooms to scatter, and transfer 4 Of him, whom she denied a home, the grave. But this shall not be granted ; let my dust Lie where it falls; nor shall the soil which gave Me breath, but in her sudden fury thrust
Me forth to breathe elsewhere, so re-assume My indignant bones, because her angry gust Forsooth is over, and repeal'd her doom.
No, she denied me what was mine-my roof, And shall not have what is not hers-my tomb.
Too long her armed wrath hath kept aloof
The breast which would have bled for her, the heart That beat, the mind that was temptation-proof, The man who fought, toil'd, travell'd, and each part Of a true citizen fulfill'd, and saw
For his reward the Guelf's ascendant art
Pass his destruction even into a law.
These things are not made for forgetfulness-
Florence shall be forgotten first; too raw
The wound, too deep the wrong, and the distress
Of such endurance too prolong'd, to make
My pardon greater, her injustice less,
Though late repented; yet—yet for her sake
I feel some fonder yearnings, and for thine,
My own Beatrice, I would hardly take
Vengeance upon the land which once was mine,
And still is hallow'd by thy dust's return,
Which would protect the murderess like a shrine,
And save ten thousand foes by thy sole urn.
Though, like old Marius from Minturnæ's marsh
And Carthage ruins, my lone breast may bura
At times with evil feelings hot and harsh,
And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foe
Writhe in a dream before me, and o'erarch
My brow with hopes of triumph,-let them go!
Such are the last infirmities of those
Who long have suffer'd more than mortal woe,
And yet being mortal still, have no repose
But on the pillow of Revenge-Revenge,
Who sleeps to dream of blood, and waking glows
With the oft-baffled, slakeless thirst of change,
When we shall mount again, and they that trod
Be trampled on, while Death and Até range
O'er humbled heads and sever'd necks-Great God!
Take these thoughts from me-to thy hands I yield
My many wrongs, and thine almighty rod
Will fall on those who smote me,-be my shield!
As thou hast been in peril, and in pain,
In turbulent cities, and the tented field-
In toil, and many troubles borne in vain
For Florence. I appeal from her to Thee!
Thee, whom I late saw in thy loftiest reign,
Even in that glorious vision, which to see
And live was never granted until now,
And yet thou hast permitted this to me.
Alas! with what a weight upon my brow
The sense of earth and earthly things come back,
Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low,
The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack,
Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect
Of half a century bloody and black,
And the frail few years I may yet expect
Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear,
For I have been too long and deeply wreck'd
On the lone rock of desolate despair
To lift my eyes more to the passing sail
Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare;
Nor raise my voice-for who would heed my wail!
I am not of this people, nor this age,
And yet my harpings will unfold a tale
Which shall preserve these times when not a page
Of their perturbed annals could attract
An eye to gaze upon their civil rage,
Did not my verse embalm full many an act
Worthless as they who wrought it: 'tis the doom
Of spirits of my order to be rack'd
In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone;
Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of him-who now is but a name.
And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone
Spread his-by him unheard, unheeded-fame;
And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die
Is nothing; but to wither thus-to tame
My mind down from its own infinity-
To live in narrow ways with little men,
A common sight to every common eye,
A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den,
Ripp'd from all kindred, from all home, all things
That make communion sweet, and soften pain-
To feel me in the solitude of kings,
Without the power that makes them bear a crown-
To envy every dove his nest and wings
Which waft him where the Apennine looks down
On Arno, till he perches, it may be,
Within my all inexorable town,
Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she, 5
Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought
Destruction for a dowry-this to see
And feel, and know without repair, hath taught
A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free:
I have not vilely found, nor basely sought,—
They made an exile-not a slave of me.
THE spirit of the fervent days of old,
This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong,
Thy Tuscan bard, the banish'd Ghibelline.
Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries
Is rent,-a thousand years, which yet supine
Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise,
Heaving in dark and sullen undulation,
Float from eternity into these eyes;
The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station,
The unborn earthquake yet is in the womb,
The bloody chaos yet expects creation,
But all things are disposing for thy doom;
The elements await but for the word,
<< Let there be darkness!» and thou grow'st a tomb! Yes! thou, so beautiful shall feel the sword,
Thou, Italy! so fair that paradise,
Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored:
Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice?
Thou, Italy! whose ever golden fields,
Plough'd by the sunbeams solely, would suffice
For the world's granary; thou whose sky heaven gilds
With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue;
Thou, in whose pleasant places summer builds
Her palace, in whose cradle empire grew,
And form'd the eternal city's ornaments
From spoils of kings whom freemen overthrew;
Birth-place of heroes, sanctuary of saints,
Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made
Her home; thou, all which fondest fancy paints,
And finds her prior vision but pourtray'd
In feeble colours, when the eye-from the Alp
Of horrid show, and rock and shaggy shade
Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp
Nods to the storm-dilates and dotes o'er thee,
And wistfully implores, as 't were, for help
When words were things that came to pass, and To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,
Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold Their children's children's doom already brought Forth from the abyss of time which is to be, The chaos of events, where lie half-wrought
Shapes that must undergo mortality;
What the great seers of Israel wore within,
That spirit was on them, and is on me,
And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din
Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed, This voice from out the wilderness, the sin Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed, The only guerdon I have ever known.
Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed,
Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown
With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget
In thine irreparable wrongs my own;
We can have but one country, and even yet
Thou'rt mine-my bones shall be within thy breast,
My soul within thy language, which once set
With our old Roman sway in the wide west;
But I will make another tongue arise
As lofty and more sweet, in which exprest
The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,
Shall find alike such sounds for every theme
That every word, as brilliant as thy skies,
Shall realise a poet's proudest dream,
And make thee Europe's nightingale of song;
So that all present speech to thine shall seem
The note of meaner birds, and every tongue
Confess its barbarism when compared with thine.
Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still
The more approach'd, and dearest were they free,
Thou-thou must wither to each tyrant's will:
The Goth hath been,—the German, Frank, and Hun,
Are yet to come,-and on the imperial hill
Ruin, already proud of the deeds done
By the old barbarians, there awaits the new,
Throned on the Palatine, while, lost and won,
Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue
Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter
Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue,
And deepens into red the saffron water
Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest,
And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,
Vow'd to their god, have shrieking fled, and ceased
Their ministry: the nations take their prey,
Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast
And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they
Are; these but gorge the flesh and lap the gore
Of the departed, and then go their way;
But those, the human savages, explore
All paths of torture, and insatiate yet
With Ugolino hunger prowl for more.
Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set,6
The chiefless army of the dead, which late
Beneath the traitor prince's banner met,
Hath left its leader's ashes at the gate;
Had but the royal rebel lived, perchance
Thou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate.
Oh! Rome, the spoiler of the spoil of France,
From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never
Sha!! foreign standard to thy walls advance, But Tiber shall become a mournful river.
Oh! when the strangers pass the Alps and Po, Crush them, ye rocks! floods, whelm them, and for ever!
Why sleep the idle avalanches so,
To topple on the lonely pilgrim's head?
Why doth Eridanus but overflow
The peasant's harvest from his turbid bed?
Were not each barbarous horde a nobler prey?
Over Cambyses' host the desert spread
ller sandy ocean, and the sea waves' sway
Roll'd over Pharaoh and his thousands,-why,
Mountains and waters, do ye not as they?
And you, ye men! Romans, who dare not die,
Sons of the conquerors who overthrew
Those who overthrew proud Xerxes, where yet lie
The dead whose tomb oblivion never knew,
Are the Alps weaker than Thermopyle?
Their passes more alluring to the view
Of an invader? is it they, or ye
That to each host the mountain-gate unbar,
And leave the march in peace, the passage free?
Why, nature's self detains the victor's car,
And makes your land impregnable, if earth Could be so: but alone she will not war, Yet aids the warrior worthy of his birth,
In a soil where the mothers bring forth men!
No so with those whose souls are little worth;
For them no fortress can avail,—the den
Of the poor reptile which preserves its sting
Is more secure than walls of adamant, when
The hearts of those within are quivering.
Are ye not brave? Yes, yet the Ausonian soil
Hath hearts, and hands, and arms, and hosts to bring
Against oppression; but how vain the toil,
While still division sows the seeds of woc
And weakness, till the stranger reaps the spoil.
Oh! my own beauteous land! so long laid low,
So long the grave of thy own children's hopes,
When there is but required a single blow
To break the chain, yet-yet the avenger stops,
And doubt and discord step 'twixt thine and thee, And join their strength to that which with thee copes: What is there wanting then to set thee free,
And show thy beauty in its fullest light?
To make the Alps impassable; and we,
Her sous, may do this with one deed---Unite!
FROM out the mass of never dying ill,
The plague, the prince, the stranger, and the sword, Vials of wrath but emptied to refill
And flow again, I caunot all record
That crowds on my prophetic eye: the earth
And ocean written o'er would not afford
Space for the annal, yet it shall go forth;
Yes, all, though not by human pen, is graven, There where the farthest suns and stars have birth. Spread like a banner at the gate of heaven,
The bloody scroll of our millennial wrongs Waves, and the echo of our groans is driven Athwart the sound of archangelic songs,
And Italy, the martyr'd nation's gore, Will not in vain arise to where belongs Omnipotence and mercy evermore;
Like to a harp-string stricken by the wind,
The sound of her lament shall, rising o'er
The seraph voices, touch the Almighty Mind.
Meantime I, humblest of thy sons, and of
Earth's dust by immortality refined
To sense and suffering, though the vain may scoff,
And tyrants threat, and meeker victims bow
Before the storm because its breath is rough,
To thee, my country! whom before as now,
I loved and love, devote the mournful lyre
And melancholy gift high powers allow
To read the future; and if now my fire
Is not as once it shone o'er thee, forgive!
I but foretel thy fortunes-then expire;
Think not that I would look on them and live.
A spirit forces me to see and speak,
And for my guerdon grants not to survive;
My heart shall be pour'd over thee and break:
Yet for a moment, ere I must resume
Thy sable web of sorrow, let me take
Over the gleams that flash athwart thy gloom
A softer glimpse; some stars shine through thy night,
And many meteors, and above thy tomb
Leans sculptured beauty, which death cannot blight;
And from thine ashes boundless spirits rise
To give thee honour and the earth delight;
Thy soil shall still be pregnant with the wise,
The gay, the learn'd, the generous, and the brave,
Native to thee as summer to thy skies,
Conquerors on foreign shores and the far wave,7
Discoverers of new worlds, which take their name; 8
For thee alone they have no arm to save,
And all thy recompense is in their fame,
A noble one to them, but not to thee-
Shall they be glorious, and thou still the same?
Oh! more than these illustrious far shall be
The being-and even yet he may be born-
The mortal saviour who shall set thee free,
And see thy diadem, so changed and worn
By fresh barbarians, on thy brow replaced;
And the sweet sun replenishing thy morn,
Thy moral morn, too long with clouds defaced
And noxious vapours from Avernus risen,
Such as all they must breathe who are debased
By servitude, and have the mind in prison.
Yet through this centuried eclipse of woe
Some voices shall be heard, and earth shall listen; Poets shall follow in the path I show,
And make it broader; the same brilliant sky
Which cheers the birds to song shall bid them glow
And raise their notes as natural and high;
Tuneful shall be their numbers: they shall sing
Many of love, and some of liberty,
But few shall soar upon that eagle's wing,
And look in the sun's face with eagle's gaze
All free and fearless as the feather'd king,
But fly more near the earth; how many a phrase
Sublime shall lavish'd be on some small prince
In all the prodigality of praise!
And language, eloquently false, evince
The harlotry of genius, which, like beauty,
Too oft forgets its own self-reverence,
And looks on prostitution as a duty.
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