I heard last night a little child go singing
 ’Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,
O bella libertà, 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 libertà 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? Michel’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 abhorrence
 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 however 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 libertà,”
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, Cæsar.” 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 staunch
 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 desiccating 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 burial-sods,
 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 dæmons; 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 king 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 honour’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 benison?
 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 toward 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
Honoured 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 favourite 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 honoured: 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, much 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 Cæsars 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 virtuous altitude!
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 endue
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 grey
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—
“Væ! meâ culpâ!”—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 favourite child,
 And meditative looks beyond the door
(But not to mark the kidling’s teeth have filed
T  he 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 world-wide 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 hop
 ’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 Nicæa 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 Church” (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 honourable 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,
N  or 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 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,
 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!
Other Elizabeth Barrett Browning songs:
all Elizabeth Barrett Browning songs all songs from 2013