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,

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

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A sort of horror; as the veil withdrawn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

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

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 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:

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,

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

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

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 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,

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 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

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!