Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Casa Guidi Windows 1 lyrics

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 it's 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
Sit's 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 it's 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 it's 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 it's 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 it's 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 spirit's who tread firm
To ends foreshown
 And use the name of greatness unforgot
To meditate what greatness may be done

For Dante sit's 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 it'self 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 it's 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 it's 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 counterfeit's?
 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 sit's 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 suit's 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 it's 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 bruit's
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 it's 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 it's 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 it's 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 spirit's 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!