Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  But Giusti had so much gentleness, sweetness, and meekness in his heart, that I do not like to leave the impression of him as a satirist last upon the reader. Rather let me close these meager notices with the beautiful little poem, said to be the last he wrote, as he passed his days in the slow death of the consumptive. It is called

  A PRAYER.

  For the spirit confused

  With misgiving and with sorrow,

  Let me, my Saviour, borrow

  The light of faith from thee.

  O lift from it the burden

  That bows it down before thee.

  With sighs and with weeping

  I commend myself to thee;

  My faded life, thou knowest,

  Little by little is wasted

  Like wax before the fire,

  Like snow-wreaths in the sun.

  And for the soul that panteth

  For its refuge in thy bosom,

  Break, thou, the ties, my Saviour,

  That hinder it from thee.

  FRANCESCO DALL’ ONGARO

  I

  In the month of March, 1848, news came to Rome of the insurrection in Vienna, and a multitude of the citizens assembled to bear the tidings to the Austrian Ambassador, who resided in the ancient palace of the Venetian Republic. The throng swept down the Corso, gathering numbers as it went, and paused in the open space before the Palazzo di Venezia. At its summons, the ambassador abandoned his quarters, and fled without waiting to hear the details of the intelligence from Vienna. The people, incited by a number of Venetian exiles, tore down the double-headed eagle from the portal, and carried it for a more solemn and impressive destruction to the Piazza del Popolo, while a young poet erased the inscription asserting the Austrian claim to the palace, and wrote in its stead the words, “Palazzo della Dieta Italiana.”

  The sentiment of national unity expressed in this legend had been the ruling motive of the young poet Francesco Dall’ Ongaro’s life, and had already made his name famous through the patriotic songs that were sung all over Italy. Garibaldi had chanted one of his Stornelli when embarking from Montevideo in the spring of 1848 to take part in the Italian revolutions, of which these little ballads had become the rallying-cries; and if the voice of the people is in fact inspired, this poet could certainly have claimed the poet’s long-lost honors of prophecy, for it was he who had shaped their utterance. He had ceased to assume any other sacred authority, though educated a priest, and at the time when he devoted the Palazzo di Venezia to the idea of united Italy, there was probably no person in Rome less sacerdotal than he.

  Francesco Dall’ Ongaro was born in 1808, at an obscure hamlet in the district of Oderzo in the Friuli, of parents who were small freeholders. They removed with their son in his tenth year to Venice, and there he began his education for the Church in the Seminary of the Madonna della Salute. The tourist who desires to see the Titians and Tintorettos in the sacristy of this superb church, or to wonder at the cold splendors of the interior of the temple, is sometimes obliged to seek admittance through the seminary; and it has doubtless happened to more than one of my readers to behold many little sedate old men in their teens, lounging up and down the cool, humid courts there, and trailing their black priestly robes over the springing mold. The sun seldom strikes into that sad close, and when the boys form into long files, two by two, and march out for recreation, they have a torpid and melancholy aspect, upon which the daylight seems to smile in vain. They march solemnly up the long Zattere, with a pale young father at their head, and then march solemnly back again, sweet, genteel, pathetic specters of childhood, and re�nter their common tomb, doubtless unenvied by the hungriest and raggedest street boy, who asks charity of them as they pass, and hoarsely whispers “Raven!” when their leader is beyond hearing. There is no reason to suppose that a boy, born poet among the mountains, and full of the wild and free romance of his native scenes, could love the life led at the Seminary of the Salute, even though it included the study of literature and philosophy. From his childhood Dall’ Ongaro had given proofs of his poetic gift, and the reverend ravens of the seminary were unconsciously hatching a bird as little like themselves as might be. Nevertheless, Dall’ Ongaro left their school to enter the University of Padua as student of theology, and after graduating took orders, and went to Este, where he lived some time as teacher of belles-lettres.

  At Este his life was without scope, and he was restless and unhappy, full of ardent and patriotic impulses, and doubly restricted by his narrow field and his priestly vocation. In no long time he had trouble with the Bishop of Padua, and, abandoning Este, seems also to have abandoned the Church forever. The chief fruit of his sojourn in that quaint and ancient village was a poem entitled II Venerd� Santo, in which he celebrated some incidents of the life of Lord Byron, somewhat as Byron would have done. Dall’ Ongaro’s poems, however, confess the influence of the English poet less than those of other modern Italians, whom Byron infected so much more than his own nation.

  From Este, Dall’ Ongaro went to Trieste, where he taught literature and philosophy, wrote for the theater, and established a journal in which, for ten years, he labored to educate the people in his ideas of Italian unity and progress. That these did not coincide with the ideas of most Italian dreamers and politicians of the time may be inferred from the fact that he began in 1846 a course of lectures on Dante, in which he combated the clerical tendencies of Gioberti and Balbo, and criticised the first acts of Pius IX. He had as profound doubt of Papal liberality as Niccolini, at a time when other patriots were fondly cherishing the hope of a united Italy under an Italian pontiff; and at Rome, two years later, he sought to direct popular feeling from the man to the end, in one of the earliest of his graceful Stornelli.

  PIO NONO.

  Pio Nono is a name, and not the man

  Who saws the air from yonder Bishop’s seat;

  Pio Nono is the offspring of our brain,

  The idol of our hearts, a vision sweet;

  Pio Nono is a banner, a refrain,

  A name that sounds well sung upon the street.

  Who calls, “Long live Pio Nono!” means to call,

  Long live our country, and good-will to all!

  And country and good-will, these signify

  That it is well for Italy to die;

  But not to die for a vain dream or hope,

  Not to die for a throne and for a Pope!

  During these years at Trieste, however, Dall’ Ongaro seems to have been also much occupied with pure literature, and to have given a great deal of study to the sources of national poetry, as he discovered them in the popular life and legends. He had been touched with the prevailing romanticism; he had written hymns like Manzoni, and, like Carrer, he sought to poetize the traditions and superstitions of his countrymen. He found a richer and deeper vein than the Venetian poet among his native hills and the neighboring mountains of Slavonia, but I cannot say that he wrought it to much better effect. The two volumes which he published in 1840 contain many ballads which are very graceful and musical, but which lack the fresh spirit of songs springing from the popular heart, while they also want the airy and delicate beauty of the modern German ballads. Among the best of them are two which Dall’ Ongaro built up from mere lines and fragments of lines current among the people, as in later years he more successfully restored us two plays of Menander from the plots and a dozen verses of each. “One may imitate,” he says, “more or less fortunately, Manzoni, Byron, or any other poet, but not the simple inspirations of the people. And ‘The Pilgrim who comes from Rome,’ and the ‘Rosettina,’ if one could have them complete as they once were, would probably make me blush for my elaborate variations.” But study which was so well directed, and yet so conscious of its limitations, could not but be of great value; and Dall’ Ongaro, no doubt, owed to it his gift of speaking so authentically for the popular heart. That which he did later showed that he studied the people’s thought and expression con amore, and in no vain sentiment
of dilettanteism, or antiquarian research, or literary patronage.

  It is not to be supposed that Dall’ Ongaro’s literary life had at this period an altogether objective tendency. In the volumes mentioned, there is abundant evidence that he was of the same humor as all men of poetic feeling must be at a certain time of life. Here are pretty verses of occasion, upon weddings and betrothals, such as people write in Italy; here are stanzas from albums, such as people used to write everywhere; here are didactic lines; here are bursts of mere sentiment and emotion. In the volume of Fantasie, published at Florence in 1866, Dall’ Ongaro collected some of the ballads from his early works, but left out the more subjective effusions.

  I give one of these in which, under a fantastic name and in a fantastic form, the poet expresses the tragic and pathetic interest of the life to which he was himself vowed.

  THE SISTER OF THE MOON.

  Shine, moon, ah shine! and let thy pensive light

  Be faithful unto me:

  I have a sister in the lonely night

  When I commune with thee.

  Alone and friendless in the world am I,

  Sorrow’s forgotten maid,

  Like some poor dove abandoned to die

  By her first love unwed.

  Like some poor floweret in a desert land

  I pass my days alone;

  In vain upon the air its leaves expand,

  In vain its sweets are blown.

  No loving hand shall save it from the waste,

  And wear the lonely thing;

  My heart shall throb upon no loving breast

  In my neglected spring.

  That trouble which consumes my weary soul

  No cunning can relieve,

  No wisdom understand the secret dole

  Of the sad sighs I heave.

  My fond heart cherished once a hope, a vow,

  The leaf of autumn gales!

  In convent gloom, a dim lamp burning low,

  My spirit lacks and fails.

  I shall have prayers and hymns like some dead saint

  Painted upon a shrine,

  But in love’s blessed power to fall and faint,

  It never shall be mine.

  Born to entwine my life with others, born

  To love and to be wed,

  Apart from all I lead my life forlorn,

  Sorrow’s forgotten maid.

  Shine, moon, ah shine! and let thy tender light

  Be faithful unto me:

  Speak to me of the life beyond the night

  I shall enjoy with thee.

  II

  It will here satisfy the strongest love of contrasts to turn from Dall’ Ongaro the sentimental poet to Dall’ Ongaro the politician, and find him on his feet and making a speech at a public dinner given to Richard Cobden at Trieste, in 1847. Cobden was then, as always, the advocate of free trade, and Dall’ Ongaro was then, as always, the advocate of free government. He saw in the union of the Italians under a customs-bond the hope of their political union, and in their emancipation from oppressive imposts their final escape from yet more galling oppression. He expressed something of this, and, though repeatedly interrupted by the police, he succeeded in saying so much as to secure his expulsion from Trieste.

  Italy was already in a ferment, and insurrections were preparing in Venice, Milan, Florence, and Rome; and Dall’ Ongaro, consulting with the Venetian leaders Manin and Tommaseo, retired to Tuscany, and took part in the movements which wrung a constitution from the Grand Duke, and preceded the flight of that prince. In December he went to Rome, where he joined himself with the Venetian refugees and with other Italian patriots, like D’Azeglio and Durando, who were striving to direct the popular mind toward Italian unity. The following March he was, as we have seen, one of the exiles who led the people against the Palazzodi Venezia. In the mean time the insurrection of the glorious Five Days had taken place at Milan, and the Lombard cities, rising one after another, had driven out the Austrian garrisons. Dall’ Ongaro went from Rome to Milan, and thence, by advice of the revolutionary leaders, to animate the defense against the Austrians in Friuli; one of his brothers was killed at Palmanuova, and another severely wounded. Treviso, whither he had retired, falling into the hands of the Germans, he went to Venice, then a republic under the presidency of Manin; and here he established a popular journal, which opposed the union of the struggling republic with Piedmont under Carlo Alberto. Dall’ Ongaro was finally expelled and passed next to Ravenna, where he found Garibaldi, who had been banished by the Roman government, and was in doubt as to how he might employ his sword on behalf of his country. In those days the Pope’s moderately liberal minister, Rossi, was stabbed, and Count Pompeo Campello, an old literary friend and acquaintance of Dall’ Ongaro, was appointed minister of war. With Garibaldi’s consent the poet went to Rome, and used his influence to such effect that Garibaldi was authorized to raise a legion of volunteers, and was appointed general of those forces which took so glorious a part in the cause of Italian Independence. Soon after, when the Pope fled to Gaeta, and the Republic was proclaimed, Dall’ Ongaro and Garibaldi were chosen representatives of the people. Then followed events of which it is still a pang keen to read: the troops of the French Republic marched upon Rome, and, after a defense more splendid and heroic than any victory, the city fell. The Pope returned, and all who loved Italy and freedom turned in exile from Rome. The cities of the Romagna, Tuscany, Lombardy, and Venetia had fallen again under the Pope, the Grand Duke, and the Austrians, and Dall’ Ongaro took refuge in Switzerland.

  {Illustration: FRANCESCO DALL’ ONGARA}

  Without presuming to say whether Dall’ Ongaro was mistaken in his political ideas, we may safely admit that he was no wiser a politician than Dante or Petrarch. He was an anti-Papist, as these were, and like these he opposed an Italy of little principalities and little republics. But his dream, unlike theirs, was of a great Italian democracy, and in 1848-49 he opposed the union of the Italian patriots under Carlo Alberto, because this would have tended to the monarchy.

  III

  But it is not so much with Dall’ Ongaro’s political opinions that we have to do as with his poetry of the revolutionary period of 1848, as we find in it the little collection of lyrics which he calls “Stornelli.” These commemorate nearly all the interesting aspects of that epoch; and in their wit and enthusiasm and aspiration, we feel the spirit of a race at once the most intellectual and the most emotional in the world, whose poets write as passionately of politics as of love. Arnaud awards Dall’ Ongaro the highest praise, and declares him “the first to formulate in the common language of Italy patriotic songs which, current on the tongues of the people, should also remain the patrimony of the national literature.... In his popular songs,” continues this critic, “Dall’ Ongaro has given all that constitutes true, good, and — not the least merit — novel poetry. Meter and rhythm second the expression, imbue the thought with harmony, and develop its symmetry.... How enviable is that perspicuity which does not oblige you to re-read a single line to evolve therefrom the latent idea!” And we shall have no less to admire the perfect art which, never passing the intelligence of the people, is never ignoble in sentiment or idea, but always as refined as it is natural.

  I do not know how I could better approach our poet than by first offering this lyric, written when, in 1847, the people of Leghorn rose in arms to repel a threatened invasion of the Austrians.

  THE WOMAN OF LEGHORN.

  Adieu, Livorno! adieu, paternal walls!

  Perchance I never shall behold you more!

  On father’s and mother’s grave the shadow falls.

  My love has gone under our flag to war;

  And I will follow him where fortune calls;

  I have had a rifle in my hands before.

  The ball intended for my lover’s breast,

  Before he knows it my heart shall arrest;

  And over his dead comrade’s visage he

  Shall pitying stoop, and lo
ok whom it can be.

  Then he shall see and know that it is I:

  Poor boy! how bitterly my love will cry!

  The Italian editor of the “Stornelli” does not give the closing lines too great praise when he declares that “they say more than all the lament of Tancred over Clorinda.” In this little flight of song, we pass over more tragedy than Messer Torquato could have dreamed in the conquest of many Jerusalems; for, after all, there is nothing so tragic as fact. The poem is full at once of the grand national impulse, and of purely personal and tender devotion; and that fluttering, vehement purpose, thrilling and faltering in alternate lines, and breaking into a sob at last, is in every syllable the utterance of a woman’s spirit and a woman’s nature.

  Quite as womanly, though entirely different, is this lament, which the poet attributes to his sister for their brother, who fell at Palmanuova, May 14, 1848.

  THE SISTER.

  (Palma, May 14, 1848.)

  And he, my brother, to the fort had gone,

  And the grenade, it struck him in the breast;

  He fought for liberty, and death he won,

  For country here, and found in heaven rest.

  And now only to follow him I sigh;

  A new desire has taken me to die, —

  To follow him where is no enemy,