Classic and Contemporary Poetry
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS, by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING Poem Explanation Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: I heard last night a little child go singing Last Line: The vail, lean inward to the mercy-seat. Subject(s): Florence, Italy; Italy - Revolutions; Savonarola, Girolamo (1452-1498) | ||||||||
A POEM, IN TWO PARTS PART I I HEARD last night a little child go singing 'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church, O bella liberta, O bella! -- stringing The same words still on notes he went in search So high for, you concluded the upspringing Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green, And that the heart of Italy must beat, While such a voice had leave to rise serene 'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street: A little child, too, who not long had been By mother's finger steadied on his feet, And still O bella liberta he sang. Then I thought, musing, of the innumerous Sweet songs which still for Italy outrang From older singers' lips who sang not thus Exultingly and purely, yet, with pang Fast sheathed in music, touched the heart of us So finely that the pity scarcely pained. I thought how Filicaja led on others, Bewailers for their Italy enchained, And how they called her childless among mothers, Widow of empires, ay, and scarce refrained Cursing her beauty to her face, as brothers Might a shamed sister's, -- 'Had she been less fair She were less wretched;' -- how, evoking so From congregated wrong and heaped despair Of men and women writhing under blow, Harrowed and hideous in a filthy lair, Some personating Image wherein woe Was wrapt in beauty from offending much, They called it Cybele, or Niobe, Or laid it corpse-like on a bier for such, Where all the world might drop for Italy Those cadenced tears which burn not where they touch, -- 'Juliet of nations, canst thou die as we? And was the violet crown that crowned thy head So over-large, though new buds made it rough, It slipped down and across thine eyelids dead, O sweet, fair Juliet?' Of such songs enough, Too many of such complaints! behold, instead, Void at Verona, Juliet's marble trough: As void as that is, are all images Men set between themselves and actual wrong, To catch the weight of pity, meet the stress Of conscience, -- since 't is easier to gaze long On mournful masks and sad effigies Than on real, live, weak creatures crushed by strong. For me who stand in Italy to-day Where worthier poets stood and sang before, I kiss their footsteps yet their words gainsay. I can but muse in hope upon this shore Of golden Arno as it shoots away Through Florence' heart beneath her bridges four: Bent bridges, seeming to strain off like bows And tremble while the arrowy undertide Shoots on and cleaves the marble as it goes, And strikes up palace-walls on either side, And froths the cornice out in glittering rows, With doors and windows quaintly multiplied, And terrace-sweeps, and gazers upon all, By whom if flower or kerchief were thrown out From any lattice there, the same would fall Into the river underneath, no doubt, It runs so close and fast 'twixt wall and wall. How beautiful! the mountains from without In silence listen for the word said next. What word will men say, -- here where Giotto planted His campanile like an unperplexed Fine question Heavenward, touching the things granted A noble people who, being greatly vexed In act, in aspiration keep undaunted? What word will God say? Michael's Night and Day And Dawn and Twilight wait in marble scorn Like dogs upon a dunghill, couched on clay, From whence the Medicean stamp's outworn, The final putting off of all such sway By all such hands, and freeing of the unborn In Florence and the great world outside Florence. Three hundred years his patient statues wait In that small chapel of the dim Saint Lawrence: Day's eyes are breaking bold and passionate Over his shoulder, and will flash abhor rence On darkness and with level looks meet fate, When once loose from that marble film of theirs; The Night has wild dreams in her sleep, the Dawn Is haggard as the sleepless, Twilight wears A sort of horror; as the veil withdrawn 'Twixt the artist's soul and works had left them heirs Of speechless thoughts which would not quail nor fawn, Of angers and contempts, of hope and love: For not without a meaning did he place The princely Urbino on the seat above With everlasting shadow on his face, While the slow dawns and twilights disapprove The ashes of his long-extinguished race Which never more shall clog the feet of men. I do believe, divinest Angelo, That winter-hour in Via Larga, when They bade thee build a statue up in snow And straight that marvel of thine art again Dissolved beneath the sun's Italian glow, Thine eyes, dilated with the plastic passion, Thawing too in drops of wounded manhood, since, To mock alike thine art and indignation, Laughed at the palace-window the new prince, -- ('Aha! this genius needs for exaltation, When all's said and howe'er the proud may wince, A little marble from our princely mines!') I do believe that hour thou laughedst too For the whole sad world and for thy Florentines, After those few tears, which were only few! That as, beneath the sun, the grand white lines Of thy snow-statue trembled and withdrew, -- The head, erect as Jove's, being palsied first, The eyelids flattened, the full brow turned blank, The right-hand, raised but now as if it cursed, Dropt, a mere snowball, (till the people sank Their voices, though a louder laughter burst From the royal window) -- thou couldst proudly thank God and the prince for promise and presage, And laugh the laugh back, I think verily, Thine eyes being purged by tears of righteous rage To read a wrong into a prophecy, And measure a true great man's heritage Against a mere great-duke's posterity. I think thy soul said then, 'I do not need A princedom and its quarries, after all; For if I write, paint, carve a word, indeed, On book or board or dust, on floor or wall, The same is kept of God who taketh heed That not a letter of the meaning fall Or ere it touch and teach his world's deep heart, Outlasting, therefore, all your lordships, sir! So keep your stone, beseech you, for your part, To cover up your grave-place and refer The proper titles; I live by my art. The thought I threw into this snow shall stir This gazing people when their gaze is done; And the tradition of your act and mine, When all the snow is melted in the sun, Shall gather up, for unborn men, a sign Of what is the true princedom, -- ay, and none Shall laugh that day, except the drunk with wine.' Amen, great Angelo! the day's at hand. If many laugh not on it, shall we weep? Much more we must not, let us understand. Through rhymers sonneteering in their sleep, And archaists mumbling dry bones up the land, And sketchers lauding ruined towns a-heap, -- Through all that drowsy hum of voices smooth, The hopeful bird mounts carolling from brake, The hopeful child, with leaps to catch his growth, Sings open-eyed for liberty's sweet sake: And I, a singer also from my youth, Prefer to sing with these who are awake, With birds, with babes, with men who will not fear The baptism of the holy morning dew, (And many of such wakers now are here, Complete in their anointed manhood, who Will greatly dare and greatlier persevere) Than join those old thin voices with my new, And sigh for Italy with some safe sigh Cooped up in music 'twixt an oh and ah, -- Nay, hand in hand with that young child, will I Go singing rather, 'Bella liberta,' Than, with those poets, croon the dead or cry 'Se tu men bella fossi, Italia!' 'Less wretched if less fair.' Perhaps a truth Is so far plain in this, that Italy, Long trammelled with the purple of her youth Against her age's ripe activity, Sits still upon her tombs, without death's ruth But also without life's brave energy. 'Now tell us what is Italy?' men ask: And others answer, 'Virgil, Cicero, Catullus, Caesar.' What beside? to task The memory closer -- 'Why, Boccaccio, Dante, Petrarca,' -- and if still the flask Appears to yield its wine by drops too slow, -- 'Angelo, Raffael, Pergolese,' -- all Whose strong hearts beat through stone, or charged again The paints with fire of souls electrical, Or broke up heaven for music. What more then? Why, then, no more. The chaplet's last beads fall In naming the last saintship within ken, And, after that, none prayeth in the land. Alas, this Italy has too long swept Heroic ashes up for hour-glass sand; Of her own past, impassioned nympholept! Consenting to be nailed here by the hand To the very bay-tree under which she stept A queen of old, and plucked a leafy branch; And, licensing the world too long indeed To use her broad phylacteries to stanch And stop her bloody lips, she takes no heed How one clear word would draw an avalanche Of living sons around her, to succeed The vanished generations. Can she count These oil-eaters with large live mobile mouths Agape for macaroni, in the amount Of consecrated heroes of her south's Bright rosary? The pitcher at the fount, The gift of gods, being broken, she much loathes To let the ground-leaves of the place confer A natural bowl. So henceforth she would seem No nation, but the poet's pensioner, With alms from every land of song and dream, While aye her pipers sadly pipe of her Until their proper breaths, in that extreme Of sighing, split the reed on which they played: Of which, no more. But never say 'no more' To Italy's life! Her memories undismayed Still argue 'evermore;' her graves implore Her future to be strong and not afraid; Her very statues send their looks before. We do not serve the dead -- the past is past. God lives, and lifts his glorious mornings up Before the eyes of men awake at last, Who put away the meats they used to sup, And down upon the dust of earth outcast The dregs remaining of the ancient cup, Then turn to wakeful prayer and worthy act. The Dead, upon their awful 'vantage ground, The sun not in their faces, shall abstract No more our strength; we will not be discrowned As guardians of their crowns, nor deign transact A barter of the present, for a sound Of good so counted in the foregone days. O Dead, ye shall no longer cling to us With rigid hands of dessicating praise, And drag us backward by the garment thus, To stand and laud you in long-drawn virelays! We will not henceforth be oblivious Of our own lives, because ye lived before, Nor of our acts, because ye acted well. We thank you that ye first unlatched the door, But will not make it inaccessible By thankings on the threshold any more. We hurry onward to extinguish hell With our fresh souls, our younger hope, and God's Maturity of purpose. Soon shall we Die also! and, that then our periods Of life may round themselves to memory As smoothly as on our graves the burialsods, We now must look to it to excel as ye, And bear our age as far, unlimited By the last mind-mark; so, to be invoked By future generations, as their Dead. 'T is true that when the dust of death has choked A great man's voice, the common words he said Turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked Like horses, draw like griffins: this is true And acceptable. I, too, should desire, When men make record, with the flowers they strew, 'Savonarola's soul went out in fire Upon our Grand-duke's piazza, and burned through A moment first, or ere he did expire, The veil betwixt the right and wrong, and showed How near God sat and judged the judges there,' -- Upon the self-same pavement overstrewed To cast my violets with as reverent care, And prove that all the winters which have snowed Cannot snow out the scent from stones and air Of a sincere man's virtues. This was he, Savonarola, who, while Peter sank With his whole boat-load, called courageously 'Wake Christ, wake Christ!' -- who, having tried the tank Of old church-waters used for baptistry Ere Luther came to spill them, swore they stank; Who also by a princely deathbed cried, 'Loose Florence, or God will not loose thy soul!' Then fell back the Magnificent and died Beneath the star-look shooting from the cowl, Which turned to wormwood-bitterness the wide Deep sea of his ambitions. It were foul To grudge Savonarola and the rest Their violets: rather pay them quick and fresh! The emphasis of death makes manifest The eloquence of action in our flesh; And men who, living, were but dimly guessed, When once free from their life's entangled mesh, Show their full length in graves, or oft indeed Exaggerate their stature, in the flat, To noble admirations which exceed Most nobly, yet will calculate in that But accurately. We, who are the seed Of buried creatures, if we turned and spat Upon our antecedents, we were vile. Bring violets rather. If these had not walked Their furlong, could we hope to walk our mile? Therefore bring violets. Yet if we self-baulked Stand still, a-strewing violets all the while, These moved in vain, of whom we have vainly talked. So rise up henceforth with a cheerful smile, And having strewn the violets, reap the corn, And having reaped and garnered, bring the plough And draw new furrows 'neath the healthy morn, And plant the great Hereafter in this Now. Of old 't was so. How step by step was worn, As each man gained on each securely! -- how Each by his own strength sought his own Ideal, -- The ultimate Perfection leaning bright From out the sun and stars to bless the leal And earnest search of all for Fair and Right Through doubtful forms by earth accounted real! Because old Jubal blew into delight The souls of men with clear-piped melodies, If youthful Asaph were content at most To draw from Jubal's grave, with listening eyes, Traditionary music's floating ghost Into the grass-grown silence, were it wise? And was't not wiser, Jubal's breath being lost, That Miriam clashed her cymbals to surprise The sun between her white arms flung apart, With new glad golden sounds? that David's strings O'erflowed his hand with music from his heart? So harmony grows full from many springs, And happy accident turns holy art. You enter, in your Florence wanderings, The church of Saint Maria Novella. Pass The left stair, where at plague-time Machiavel Saw One with set fair face as in a glass, Dressed out against the fear of death and hell, Rustling her silks in pauses of the mass, To keep the thought off how her husband fell, When she left home, stark dead across her feet, -- The stair leads up to what the Orgagnas save Of Dante's daemons; you in passing it, Ascend the right stair from the farther nave To muse in a small chapel scarcely lit By Cimabue's Virgin. Bright and brave, That picture was accounted, mark, of old: A kind stood bare before its sovran grace, A reverent people shouted to behold The picture, not the king, and even the place Containing such a miracle grew bold, Named the Glad Borgo from that beauteous face Which thrilled the artist, after work, to think His own ideal Mary-smile should stand So very near him, -- he, within the brink Of all that glory, let in by his hand With too divine a rashness! Yet none shrink Who come to gaze here now; albeit 't was planned Sublimely in the thought's simplicity: The Lady, throned in empyreal state, Minds only the young Babe upon her knee, While sidelong angels bear the royal weight, Prostrated meekly, smiling tenderly Oblivion of their wings; the Child thereat Stretching its hand like God. If any should, Because of some stiff draperies and loose joints, Gaze scorn down from the heights of Raffaelhood On Cimabue's picture, -- Heaven anoints The head of no such critic, and his blood The poet's curse strikes full on and appoints To ague and cold spasms for evermore. A noble picture! worthy of the shout Wherewith along the streets the people bore Its cherub-faces which the sun threw out Until they stooped and entered the church door. Yet rightly was young Giotto talked about, Whom Cimabue found among the sheep, And knew, as gods know gods, and carried home To paint the things he had painted, with a deep And fuller insight, and so overcome His chapel - Lady with a heavenlier sweep Of light: for thus we mount into the sum Of great things known or acted. I hold, too, That Cimabue smiled upon the lad At the first stroke which passed what he could do, Or else his Virgin's smile had never had Such sweetness in 't. All great men who foreknew Their heirs in art, for art's sake have been glad, And bent their old white heads as if uncrowned, Fanatics of their pure Ideals still Far more than of their triumphs, which were found With some less vehement struggle of the will. If old Margheritone trembled, swooned And died despairing at the open sill Of other men's achievements (who achieved, By loving art beyond the master), he Was old Margheritone, and conceived Never, at first youth and most ecstasy, A Virgin like that dream of one, which heaved The death-sigh from his heart. If wistfully Margheritone sickened at the smell Of Cimabue's laurel, let him go! For Cimabue stood up very well In spite of Giotto's, and Angelico The artist-saint kept smiling in his cell The smile with which he welcomed the sweet slow Inbreak of angels (whitening through the dim That he might paint them), while the sudden sense Of Raffael's future was revealed to him By force of his own fair works' competence. The same blue waters where the dolphins swim Suggest the tritons. Through the blue Immense Strike out, all swimmers! cling not in the way Of one another, so to sink; but learn The strong man's impulse, catch the freshening spray He throws up in his motions, and discern By his clear westering eye, the time of day. Thou, God, hast set us worthy gifts to earn Besides thy heaven and Thee! and when I say There's room here for the weakest man alive To live and die, there's room too, I repeat, For all the strongest to live well, and strive Their own way, by their individual heat, -- Like some new bee-swarm leaving the old hive, Despite the wax which tempts so violet-sweet. Then let the living live, the dead retain Their grave - cold flowers! -- though honor's best supplied By bringing actions, to prove theirs not vain. Cold graves, we say? it shall be testified That living men who burn in heart and brain, Without the dead were colder. If we tried To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure The future would not stand. Precipitate This old roof from the shrine, and, insecure, The nesting swallows fly off, mate from mate. How scant the gardens, if the graves were fewer! The tall green poplars grew no longer straight Whose tops not looked to Troy. Would any fight For Athens, and not swear by Marathon? Who dared build temples, without tombs in sight? Or live, without some dead man's beni son? Or seek truth, hope for good, and strive for right, If, looking up, he saw not in the sun Some angel of the martyrs all day long Standing and waiting? Your last rhythm will need Your earliest key-note. Could I sing this song, If my dead masters had not taken heed To help the heavens and earth to make me strong, As the wind ever will find out some reed And touch it to such issues as belong To such a frail thing? None may grudge the Dead Libations from full cups. Unless we choose To look back to the hills behind us spread, The plains before us sadden and confuse; If orphaned, we are disinherited. I would but turn these lachrymals to use, And pour fresh oil in from the olive-grove, To furnish them as new lamps. Shall I say What made my heart beat with exulting love A few weeks back? -- The day was such a day As Florence owes the sun. The sky above, Its weight upon the mountains seemed to lay, And palpitate in glory, like a dove Who has flown too fast, full-hearted -- take away The image! for the heart of man beat higher That day in Florence, flooding all her streets And piazzas with a tumult and desire. The people, with accumulated heats And faces turned one way, as if one fire Both drew and flushed them, left their ancient beats And went up towards the palace-Pitti wall To thank their Grand-duke who, not quite of course, Had graciously permitted, at their call, The citizens to use their civic force To guard their civic homes. So, one and all, The Tuscan cities streamed up to the source Of this new good at Florence, taking it As good so far, presageful of more good, -- The first torch of Italian freedom, lit To toss in the next tiger's face who should Approach too near them in a greedy fit, -- The first pulse of an even flow of blood To prove the level of Italian veins Towards rights perceived and granted. How we gazed From Casa Guidi windows while, in trains Of orderly procession -- banners raised, And intermittent bursts of martial strains Which died upon the shout, as if amazed By gladness beyond music -- they passed on! The Magistracy, with insignia, passed, -- And all the people shouted in the sun, And all the thousand windows which had cast A ripple of silks in blue and scarlet down (As if the houses overflowed at last), Seemed growing larger with fair heads and eyes. The Lawyers passed, -- and still arose the shout, And hands broke from the windows to surprise Those grave calm brows with bay-tree leaves thrown out. The Priesthood passed, -- the friars with worldly-wise Keen sidelong glances from their beards about The street to see who shouted; many a monk Who takes a long rope in the waist, was there: Whereat the popular exultation drunk With indrawn 'vivas' the whole sunny air, While through the murmuring windows rose and sunk A cloud of kerchiefed hands, -- 'The church makes fair Her welcome in the new Pope's name.' Ensued The black sign of the 'Martyrs' -- (name no name, But count the graves in silence). Next were viewed The Artists; next, the Trades; and after came The People, -- flag and sign, and rights as good -- And very loud the shout was for that same Motto, 'Il popolo.' IL POPOLO, -- The word means dukedom, empire, majesty, And kings in such an hour might read it so. And next, with banners, each in his degree, Deputed representatives a-row Of every separate state of Tuscany: Siena's she-wolf, bristling on the fold Of the first flag, preceded Pisa's hare, And Massa's lion floated calm in gold, Pienza's following with his silver stare, Arezzo's steed pranced clear from bridle-hold, -- And well might shout our Florence, greeting there These, and more brethren. Last, the world had sent The various children of her teeming flanks -- Greeks, English, French -- as if to a parliament Of lovers of her Italy in ranks, Each bearing its land's symbol reverent; At which the stones seemed breaking into thanks And rattling up the sky, such sounds in proof Arose; the very house-walls seemed to bend; The very windows, up from door to roof, Flashed out a rapture of bright heads, to mend With passionate looks the gesture's whirling off A hurricane of leaves. Three hours did end While all these passed; and ever in the crowd, Rude men, unconscious of the tears that kept Their beards moist, shouted; some few laughed aloud, And none asked any why they laughed and wept: Friends kissed each other's cheeks, and foes long vowed More warmly did it; two months' babies leapt Right upward in their mother's arms, whose black Wide glittering eyes looked elsewhere; lovers pressed Each before either, neither glancing back; And peasant maidens smoothly 'tired and tressed Forgot to finger on their throats the slack Great pearl-strings; while old blind men would not rest, But pattered with their staves and slid their shoes Along the stones, and smiled as if they saw. O heaven, I think that day had noble use Among God's days! So near stood Right and Law, Both mutually forborne! Law would not bruise Nor Right deny, and each in reverent awe Honored the other. And if, ne'ertheless, That good day's sun delivered to the vines No charta, and the liberal Duke's excess Did scarce exceed a Guelf's or Ghibelline's In any special actual righteousness Of what that day he granted, still the signs Are good and full of promise, we must say, When multitudes approach their kings with prayers And kings concede their people's right to pray Both in one sunshine. Griefs are not despairs, So uttered, nor can royal claims dismay When men from humble homes and ducal chairs Hate wrong together. It was well to view Those banners ruffled in a ruler's face Inscribed, 'Live freedom, union, and all true Brave patriots who are aided by God's grace!' Nor was it ill when Leopoldo drew His little children to the window-place He stood in at the Pitti, to suggest They too should govern as the people willed. What a cry rose then! some, who saw the best, Declared his eyes filled up and overfilled With good warm human tears which unrepressed Ran down. I like his face; the forehead's build Has no capacious genius, yet perhaps Sufficient comprehension, -- mild and sad, And careful nobly, -- not with care that wraps Self-loving hearts, to stifle and make mad, But careful with the care that shuns a lapse Of faith and duty, studious not to add A burden in the gathering of a gain. And so, God save the Duke, I say with those Who that day shouted it; and while dukes reign, May all wear in the visible overflows Of spirit, such a look of careful pain! For God must love it better than repose. And all the people who went up to let Their hearts out to that Duke, as has been told -- Where guess ye that the living people met, Kept tryst, formed ranks, chose leaders, first unrolled Their banners? In the Loggia? where is set Cellini's godlike Perseus, bronze or gold, (How name the metal, when the statue flings Its soul so in your eyes?) with brow and sword Superbly calm, as all opposing things, Slain with the Gorgon, were no more abhorred Since ended? No, the people sought no wings From Perseus in the Loggia, nor implored An inspiration in the place beside From that dim bust of Brutus, jagged and grand, Where Buonarroti passionately tried From out the close-clenched marble to demand The head of Rome's sublimest homicide, Then dropt the quivering mallet from his hand, Despairing he could find no model-stuff Of Brutus in all Florence where he found The gods and gladiators thick enough. Nor there! the people chose still holier ground: The people, who are simple, blind and rough, Know their own angels, after looking round. Whom chose they then? where met they? On the stone Called Dante's, -- a plain flat stone scarce discerned From others in the pavement, -- whereupon He used to bring his quiet chair out, turned To Brunelleschi's church, and pour alone The lava of his spirit when it burned: It is not cold to-day. O passionate Poor Dante who, a banished Florentine, Didst sit austere at banquets of the great And muse upon this far-off stone of thine And think how oft some passer used to wait A moment, in the golden day's decline, With 'Good night, dearest Dante!' -- well, good night! I muse now, Dante, and think verily, Though chapelled in the byeway out of sight, Ravenna's bones would thrill with ecstasy, Couldst know thy favorite stone's elected right As tryst-place for thy Tuscans to foresee Their earliest chartas from. Good night, good morn, Henceforward, Dante! now my soul is sure That thine is better comforted of scorn, And looks down earthward in completer cure Than when, in Santa Croce church forlorn Of any corpse, the architect and hewer Did pile the empty marbles as thy tomb. For now thou art no longer exiled, now Best honored: we salute thee who art come Back to the old stone with a softer brow Than Giotto drew upon the wall, for some Good lovers of our age to track and plough Their way to, through time's ordures stratified, And startle broad awake into the dull Bargello chamber: now thou 'rt milder-eyed, -- Now Beatrix may leap up glad to cull Thy first smile, even in heaven and at her side, Like that which, nine years old, looked beautiful At May-game. What do I say? I only meant That tender Dante loved his Florence well, While Florence, now, to love him is content: And, mark ye, that the piercingest sweet smell Of love's dear incense by the living sent To find the dead, is not accessible To lazy livers -- no narcotic, -- not Swung in a censer to a sleepy tune, -- But trod out in the morning air by hot Quick spirits who tread firm to ends foreshown, And use the name of greatness unforgot, To meditate what greatness may be done. For Dante sits in heaven and ye stand here, And more remains for doing, all must feel, Than trysting on his stone from year to year To shift processions, civic toe to heel, The town's thanks to the Pitti. Are ye freer For what was felt that day? a chariot-wheel May spin fast, yet the chariot never roll. But if that day suggested something good, And bettered, with one purpose, soul by soul, -- Better means freer. A land's brotherhood Is most puissant: men, upon the whole, Are what they can be, -- nations, what they would. Will, therefore, to be strong, thou Italy! Will to be noble! Austrian Metternich Can fix no yoke unless the neck agree; And thine is like the lion's when the thick Dews shudder from it, and no man would be The stroker of his mane, which less would prick His nostril with a reed. When nations roar Like lions, who shall tame them and defraud Of the due pasture by the river-shore? Roar, therefore! shake your dewlaps dry abroad: The amphitheatre with open door Leads back upon the benches who applaud The last spear-thruster. Yet the Heavens forbid That we should call on passion to confront The brutal with the brutal and, amid This ripening world, suggest a lion-hunt And lion's-vengeance for the wrongs men did And do now, though the spears are getting blunt. We only call, because the sight and proof Of lion-strength hurts nothing; and to show A lion-heart, and measure paw with hoof, Helps something, even, and will instruct a foe As well as the onslaught, how to stand aloof: Or else the world gets past the mere brute blow Or given or taken. Children use the fist Until they are of age to use the brain; And so we needed Caesars to assist Man's justice, and Napoleons to explain God's counsel, when a point was nearly missed, Until our generations should attain Christ's stature nearer. Not that we, alas, Attain already; but a single inch Will raise to look down on the swordsman's pass, As knightly Roland on the coward's flinch: And, after chloroform and ether-gas, We find out slowly what the bee and finch Have ready found, through Nature's lamp in each, How to our races we may justify Our individual claims and, as we reach Our own grapes, bend the top vines to supply The children's uses, -- how to fill a breach With olive-branches, -- how to quench a lie With truth, and smite a foe upon the cheek With Christ's most conquering kiss. Why, these are things Worth a great nation's finding, to prove weak The 'glorious arms' of military kings. And so with wide embrace, my England, seek To stifle the bad heat and flickerings Of this world's false and nearly expended fire! Draw palpitating arrows to the wood, And twang abroad thy high hopes and thy higher Resolves, from that most virtuousaltitude! Till nations shall unconsciously aspire By looking up to thee, and learn that good And glory are not different. Announce law By freedom; exalt chivalry by peace; Instruct how clear calm eyes can overawe, And how pure hands, stretched simply to release A bond-slave, will not need a sword to draw To be held dreadful. O my England, crease Thy purple with no alien agonies, No struggles toward encroachment, no vile war! Disband thy captains, change thy victories, Be henceforth prosperous as the angels are, Helping, not humbling. Drums and battle-cries Go out in music of the morning-star -- And soon we shall have thinkers in the place Of fighters, each found able as a man To strike electric influence through a race, Unstayed by city-wall and barbican. The poet shall look grander in the face Than even of old (when he of Greece began To sing 'that Achillean wrath which slew So many heroes') -- seeing he shall treat The deeds of souls heroic toward the true, The oracles of life, previsions sweet And awful like divine swans gliding through White arms of Ledas, which will leave the heat Of their escaping godship to undue The human medium with a heavenly flush. Meanwhile, in this same Italy we want Not popular passion, to arise and crush, But popular conscience, which may covenant For what it knows. Concede without a blush, To grant the 'civic guard' is not to grant The civic spirit, living and awake: Those lappets on your shoulders, citizens, Your eyes strain after sideways till they ache (While still, in admirations and amens, The crowd comes up on festa-days to take The great sight in) -- are not intelligence, Not courage even -- alas, if not the sign Of something very noble, they are nought; For every day ye dress your sallow kine With fringes down their cheeks, though unbesought They loll their heavy heads and drag the wine And bear the wooden yoke as they were taught The first day. What ye want is light -- indeed Not sunlight -- (ye may well look up surprised To those unfathomable heavens that feed Your purple hills) -- but God's light organized In some high soul, crowned capable to lead The conscious people, conscious and advised, -- For if we lift a people like mere clay, It falls the same. We want thee, O unfound And sovran teacher! if thy beard be gray Or black, we bid thee rise up from the ground And speak the word God giveth thee to say, Inspiring into all this people round, Instead of passion, thought, which pioneers All generous passion, purifies from sin, And strikes the hour for. Rise up, teacher! here's A crowd to make a nation! -- best begin By making each a man, till all be peers Of earth's true patriots and pure martyrs in Knowing and daring. Best unbar the doors Which Peter's heirs keep locked so overclose They only let the mice across the floors, While every churchman dangles, as he goes, The great key at his girdle, and abhors In Christ's name, meekly. Open wide the house, Concede the entrance with Christ's liberal mind. And set the tables with his wine and bread. What! 'commune in both kinds?' In every kind -- Wine, wafer, love, hope, truth, unlimited, Nothing kept back. For when a man is blind To starlight, will he see the rose is red? A bondsman shivering at a Jesuit's foot -- 'Vae! mea culpa!' -- is not like to stand A freedman at a despot's and dispute His titles by the balance in his hand, Weighing them 'suo jure.' Tend the root If careful of the branches, and expand The inner souls of men before you strive For civic heroes. But the teacher, where? From all these crowded faces, all alive, Eyes, of their own lids flashing themselves bare, And brows that with a mobile life contrive A deeper shadow, -- may we in no wise dare To put a finger out and touch a man, And cry 'this is the leader'? What, all these! Broad heads, black eyes, -- yet not a soul that ran From God down with a message? All, to please The donna waving measures with her fan, And not the judgment-angel on his knees (The trumpet just an inch off from his lips), Who when he breathes next, will put out the sun? Yet mankind's self were foundered in eclipse, If lacking doers, with great works to be done; And lo, the startled earth already dips Back into light; a better day's begun; And soon this leader, teacher, will stand plain, And build the golden pipes and synthesize This people-organ for a holy strain. We hold this hope, and still in all these eyes Go sounding for the deep look which shall drain Suffused thought into channelled enterprise. Where is the teacher? What now may he do, Who shall do greatly? Doth he gird his waist With a monk's rope, like Luther? or pursue The goat, like Tell? or dry his nets in haste, Like Masaniello when the sky was blue? Keep house, like other peasants, with inlaced Bare brawny arms about a favorite child, And meditative looks beyond the door (But not to mark the kidling's teeth have filed The green shoots of his vine which last year bore Full twenty bunches), or, on triple-piled Throne-velvets sit at ease to bless the poor, Like other pontiffs, in the Poorest's name? The old tiara keeps itself aslope Upon his steady brows which, all the same, Bend mildly to permit the people's hope? Whatever hand shall grasp this oriflamme, Whatever man (last peasant or first pope Seeking to free his country) shall appear, Teach, lead, strike fire into the masses, fill These empty bladders with fine air, insphere These wills into a unity of will, And make of Italy a nation -- dear And blessed be that man! the Heavens shall kill No leaf the earth lets grow for him, and Death Shall cast him back upon the lap of Life To live more surely, in a clarion-breath Of hero-music. Brutus with the knife, Rienzi with the fasces, throb beneath Rome's stones, -- and more who threw away joy's fife Like Pallas, that the beauty of their souls Might ever shine untroubled and entire: But if it can be true that he who rolls The Church's thunders will reserve her fire For only light, -- from eucharistic bowls Will pour new life for nations that expire, And rend the scarlet of his papal vest To gird the weak loins of his countrymen, -- I hold that he surpasses all the rest Of Romans, heroes, patriots; and that when He sat down on the throne, he dispossessed The first graves of some glory. See again, This country-saving is a glorious thing: And if a common man achieved it? well. Say, a rich man did? excellent. A king? That grows sublime. A priest? improbable. A pope? Ah, there we stop, and cannot bring Our faith up to the leap, with history's bell So heavy round the neck of it -- albeit We fain would grant the possibility For thy sake, Pio Nono! Stretch thy feet In that case -- I will kiss them reverently As any pilgrim to the papal seat: And, such proved possible, thy throne to me Shall seem as holy a place as Pellico's Venetian dungeon, or as Spielberg's grate At which the Lombard woman hung the rose Of her sweet soul by its own dewy weight, To feel the dungeon round her sunshine close, And pining so, died early, yet too late For what she suffered. Yea, I will not choose Betwixt thy throne, Pope Pius, and the spot Marked red for ever, spite of rains and dews, Where Two fell riddled by the Austrian's shot, The brothers Bandiera, who accuse, With one same mother-voice and face (that what They speak may be invincible) the sins Of earth's tormentors before God the just, Until the unconscious thunderbolt begins To loosen in his grasp. And yet we must Beware, and mark the natural kiths and kins Of circumstance and office, and distrust The rich man reasoning in a poor man's hut, The poet who neglects pure truth to prove Statistic fact, the child who leaves a rut For a smoother road, the priest who vows his glove Exhales no grace, the prince who walks afoot The woman who has sworn she will not love, And this Ninth Pius in Seventh Gregory's chair, With Andrea Doria's forehead! Count what goes To making up a pope, before he wear That triple crown. We pass the worldwide throes Which went to make the popedom, -- the despair Of free men, good men, wise men; the dread shows Of women's faces, by the faggot's flash Tossed out, to the minutest stir and throb O' the white lips, the least tremble of a lash, To glut the red stare of a licensed mob; The short mad cries down oubliettes, and plash So horribly far off; priests, trained to rob, And kings that, like encouraged nightmares, sat On nations' hearts most heavily distressed With monstrous sights and apophthegms of fate -- We pass these things, -- because 'the times' are prest With necessary charges of the weight Of all this sin, and 'Calvin, for the rest, Made bold to burn Servetus. Ah, men err!' -- And so do churches! which is all we mean To bring to proof in any register Of theological fat kine and lean: So drive them back into the pens! refer Old sins (with pourpoint, 'quotha' and 'I ween') Entirely to the old times, the old times; Nor ever ask why this preponderant Infallible pure Church could set her chimes Most loudly then, just then, -- most jubilant, Precisely then, when mankind stood in crimes Full heart-deep, and Heaven's judgments were not scant. Inquire still less, what signifies a church Of perfect inspiration and pure laws Who burns the first man with a brimstone-torch. And grinds the second, bone by bone, because The times, forsooth, are used to rack and scorch! What is a holy Church unless she awes The times down from their sins? Did Christ select Such amiable times to come and teach Love to, and mercy? The whole world were wrecked If every mere great man, who lives to reach A little leaf of popular respect, Attained not simply by some special breach In the age's customs, by some precedence In thought and act, which, having proved him higher Than those he lived with, proved his competence In helping them to wonder and aspire. My words are guiltless of the bigot's sense; My soul has fire to mingle with the fire Of all these souls, within or out of doors Of Rome's church or another. I believe In one Priest, and one temple with its floors Of shining jasper gloom'd at morn and eve By countless knees of earnest auditors, And crystal walls too lucid to perceive, That none may take the measure of the place And say 'So far the porphyry, then, the flint -- To this mark mercy goes, and there ends grace,' Though still the permeable crystals hint At some white starry distance, bathed in space. I feel how nature's ice-crusts keep the dint Of undersprings of silent Deity. I hold the articulated gospels which Show Christ among us crucified on tree. I love all who love truth, if poor or rich In what they have won of truth possessively. No altars and no hands defiled with pitch Shall scare me off, but I will pray and eat With all these -- taking leave to choose my ewers -- And say at last 'Your visible churches cheat Their inward types; and, if a church assures Of standing without failure and defeat, The same both fails and lies.' To leave which lures Of wider subject through past years, -- behold, We come back from the popedom to the pope, To ponder what he must be, ere we are bold For what he may be, with our heavy hope To trust upon his soul. So, fold by fold, Explore this mummy in the priestly cope, Transmitted through the darks of time, to catch The man within the wrappage, and discern How he, an honest man, upon the watch Full fifty years for what a man may learn, Contrived to get just there; with what a snatch Of old-world oboli he had to earn The passage through; with what a drowsy sop, To drench the busy barkings of his brain; What ghosts of pale tradition, wreathed with hope 'Gainst wakeful thought, he had to entertain For heavenly visions; and consent to stop The clock at noon, and let the hour remain (Without vain windings-up) inviolate Against all chimings from the belfry. Lo, From every given pope you must abate, Albeit you love him, some things -- good, you know -- Which every given heretic you hate, Assumes for his, as being plainly so. A pope must hold by popes a little, -- yes, By councils, from Nicaea up to Trent, -- By hierocratic empire, more or less Irresponsible to men, -- he must resent Each man's particular conscience, and repress Inquiry, meditation, argument, As tyrants faction. Also, he must not Love truth too dangerously, but prefer 'The interests of the Chureh' (because a blot Is better than a rent, in miniver) -- Submit to see the people swallow hot Husk-porridge, which his chartered churchmen stir Quoting the only true God's epigraph, 'Feed my lambs, Peter!' -- must consent to sit Attesting with his pastoral ring and staff To such a picture of our Lady, hit Off well by artist-angels (though not half As fair as Giotto would have painted it) -- To such a vial, where a dead man's blood Runs yearly warm beneath a churchman's finger, -- To such a holy house of stone and wood, Whereof a cloud of angels was the bringer From Bethlehem to Loreto. Were it good For any pope on earth to be a flinger Of stones against these high-niched counterfeits? Apostates only are iconoclasts. He dares not say, while this false thing abets That true thing, 'This is false.' He keeps his fasts And prayers, as prayer and fast were silver frets To change a note upon a string that lasts, And make a lie a virtue. Now, if he Did more than this, higher hoped, and braver dared, I think he were a pope in jeopardy, Or no pope rather, for his truth had barred The vaulting of his life, -- and certainly, If he do only this, mankind's regard Moves on from him at once, to seek some new Teacher and leader. He is good and great According to the deeds a pope can do; Most liberal, save those bonds; affectionate, As princes may be, and, as priests are, true; But only the Ninth Pius after eight, When all's praised most. At best and hopefullest, He's pope -- we want a man! his heart beats warm, But, like the prince enchanted to the waist, He sits in stone and hardens by a charm Into the marble of his throne high-placed. Mild benediction waves his saintly arm -- So, good! but what we want's a perfect man, Complete and all alive: half travertine Half suits our need, and ill subserves our plan. Feet, knees, nerves, sinews, energies divine Were never yet too much for men who ran In such hard ways as must be this of thine, Deliverer whom we seek, whoe'er thou art, Pope, prince, or peasant! If, indeed, the first, The noblest, therefore! since the heroic heart Within thee must be great enough to burst Those trammels buckling to the baser part Thy saintly peers in Rome, who crossed and cursed With the same finger. Come, appear, be found, If pope or peasant, come! we hear the cock, The courtier of the mountains when first crowned With golden dawn; and orient glories flock To meet the sun upon the highest ground. Take voice and work! we wait to hear thee knock At some one of our Florentine nine gates, On each of which was imaged a sublime Face of a Tuscan genius, which, for hate's And love's sake, both, our Florence in her prime Turned boldly on all comers to her states, As heroes turned their shields in antique time Emblazoned with honorable acts. And though The gates are blank now of such images, And Petrarch looks no more from Nicolo Toward dear Arezzo, 'twixt the acacia-trees, Nor Dante, from gate Gallo -- still we know, Despite the razing of the blazonries, Remains the consecration of the shield: The dead heroic faces will start out On all these gates, if foes should take the field, And blend sublimely, at the earliest shout, With living heroes who will scorn to yield A hair's-breadth even, when, gazing round about, They find in what a glorious company They fight the foes of Florence. Who will grudge His one poor life, when that great man we see Has given five hundred years, the world being judge, To help the glory of his Italy? Who, born the fair side of the Alps, will budge, When Dante stays, when Ariosto stays, When Petrarch stays for ever? Ye bring swords, My Tuscans? Ay, if wanted in this haze, Bring swords: but first bring souls! -- bring thoughts and words, Unrusted by a tear of yesterday's, Yet awful by its wrong, -- and cut these cords, And mow this green lush falseness to the roots, And shut the mouth of hell below the swathe! And, if ye can bring songs too, let the lute's Recoverable music softly bathe Some poet's hand, that, through all bursts and bruits Of popular passion, all unripe and rathe Convictions of the popular intellect, Ye may not lack a finger up the air, Annunciative, reproving, pure, erect, To show which way your first Ideal bare The whiteness of its wings when (sorely pecked By falcons on your wrists) it unaware 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 gray 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, 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! 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, 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 gray 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 windowns 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 favors, 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 To greatness, but an igorance 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 'liberta' 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, ising 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 mend 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, straight-forward 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 kill worms sooner with a garden-spade Than you kill 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 Constrained 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 out-press 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 suckle 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 death-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 twined 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 valor 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 analysis Of masses 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 Caesar died. HE did not say 'My Brutus, is it thou?' But Italy unquestioned testified 'I killed 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 unskilled At Philippi and the honest battle-pike, To be so skilful where a man is killed Near Pompey's statue, and the daggers strike At unawares i' the throat. Was thus fulfilled An omen once of Michael 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 splendors 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 passed (As a live god's eye from a marble frieze) Along a dark of diamonds. Is it classed?' -- '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-glass, 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 larvae 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 brothellure Burnt out by popular lightnings? Hast thou found 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 pass softly with the passing-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 death-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 passage 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 vainglory we assume 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 laboring 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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SAVONAROLA by EDMUND CLERIHEW BENTLEY OLD FLAME IN SAVONAROLA'S CELL by PAUL KANE SAVONAROLA by WILLIAM STANLEY MERWIN FLORENCE, THE PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA by CLIFTON SNIDER A CHILD'S THOUGHT OF GOD by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING A COURT LADY by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING A MAN'S REQUIREMENTS by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING A PORTRAIT by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING A VIEW ACROSS THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING |
|