Arose up overhead and out of sight.
Meanwhile, let all the far ends of the world
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. Had ye curled
The laurel for your thousand artists’ brows,
If these Italian hands had planted none?
Can any sit down idle in the house
Nor hear appeals from Buonarroti’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 wing 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 John Milton’s Fiesole
Than Langland’s Malvern with the stars in flower.
And Vallombrosa, we two went to see
Last June, beloved companion, — where sublime
The mountains live in holy families,
And the slow pinewoods ever climb and climb
Half up their breasts, just stagger as they seize
Some grey crag, drop back with it many a time,
And straggle blindly down the precipice.
The Vallombrosan brooks were strewn as thick
That June-day, knee-deep with dead beechen leaves,
As Milton saw them ere his heart grew sick
And his eyes blind. I think the monks and beeves
Are all the same too: scarce have they changed the wick
On good Saint Gualbert’s altar which receives
The convent’s pilgrims; and the pool in front
(Wherein the hill-stream trout are cast, to wait
The beatific vision and the grunt
Used at refectory) keeps its weedy state,
To baffle saintly abbots who would count
The fish across their breviary nor ‘bate
The measure of their steps. O waterfalls
And forests! sound and silence! mountains bare
That leap up peak by peak and catch the palls
Of purple and silver mist to rend and share
With one another, at electric calls
Of life in the sunbeams, — till we cannot dare
Fix your shapes, count your number! we must think
Your beauty and your glory helped to fill
The cup of Milton’s soul so to the brink,
He never more was thirsty when God’s will
Had shattered to his sense the last chain-link
By which he had drawn from Nature’s visible
The fresh well-water. Satisfied by this,
He sang of Adam’s paradise and smiled,
Remembering Vallombrosa. Therefore is
The place divine to English man and child,
And pilgrims leave their souls here in a kiss.
For Italy’s the whole earth’s treasury, piled
With reveries of gentle ladies, flung
Aside, like ravelled silk, from life’s worn stuff;
With coins of scholars’ fancy, which, being rung
On work-day counter, still sound silver-proof;
In short, with all the dreams of dreamers young,
Before their heads have time for slipping off
Hope’s pillow to the ground. How oft, indeed,
We’ve sent our souls out from the rigid north,
On bare white feet which would not print nor bleed,
To climb the Alpine passes and look forth,
Where booming low the Lombard rivers lead
To gardens, vineyards, all a dream is worth, —
Sights, thou and I, Love, have seen afterward
From Tuscan Bellosguardo, wide awake,[11]
When, standing on the actual blessed sward
Where Galileo stood at nights to take
The vision of the stars, we have found it hard,
Gazing upon the earth and heaven, to make
A choice of beauty.
Therefore let us all
Refreshed in England or in other land,
By visions, with their fountain-rise and fall,
Of this earth’s darling, — we, who understand
A little how the Tuscan musical
Vowels do round themselves as if they planned
Eternities of separate sweetness, — we,
Who loved Sorrento vines in picture-book,
Or ere in wine-cup we pledged faith or glee, —
Who loved Rome’s wolf with demi-gods at suck,
Or ere we loved truth’s own divinity, —
Who loved, in brief, the classic hill and brook,
And Ovid’s dreaming tales and Petrarch’s song,
Or ere we loved Love’s self even, — let us give
The blessing of our souls (and wish them strong
To bear it to the height where prayers arrive,
When faithful spirits pray against a wrong,)
To this great cause of southern men who strive
In God’s name for man’s rights, and shall not fail.
Behold, they shall not fail. The shouts ascend
Above the shrieks, in Naples, and prevail.
Rows of shot corpses, waiting for the end
Of burial, seem to smile up straight and pale
Into the azure air and apprehend
That final gun-flash from Palermo’s coast
Which lightens their apocalypse of death.
So let them die! The world shows nothing lost;
Therefore, not blood. Above or underneath,
What matter, brothers, if ye keep your post
On duty’s side? As sword returns to sheath,
So dust to grave, but souls find place in Heaven.
Heroic daring is the true success,
The eucharistic bread requires no leaven;
And though your ends were hopeless, we should bless
Your cause as holy. Strive — and, having striven,
Take, for God’s recompense, that righteousness!
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. PART II.
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,[12] who hailed
From this Atrides’ roof (with lintel-post
Which still dr
ips 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 Caesar’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 death-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 Caesars 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 cafe-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 killed ourselves, that we should rush
On killing 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 death in churchyards bleak,
We do not cry “This Yorick is too light,”
For death grows deathlier 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
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 77
