Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Italy and the World lyrics

Florence, Bologna, Parma, Modena:
When you named them a year ago
So many graves reserved by God, in a
Day of Judgment, you seemed to know
To open and let out the resurrection

And meantime (you made your reflection
If you were English) , was nought to be done
But sorting sables, in predilection
For all those martyrs dead and gone
Till the new earth and heaven made ready

And if your politics were not heady
Violent, "Good, " you added, "good
In all things! Mourn on sure and steady
Churchyard thistles are wholesome food
For our European wandering asses

"The date of the resurrection passes
Human foreknowledge: men unborn
Will gain by it (even in the lower classes)
But none of these it is not the morn
Because the cock of France is crowing

"Cocks crow at midnight, seldom knowing
Starlight from dawn-light! ’t is a mad
Poor creature" Here you paused, and growing
Scornful, suddenly, let us add
The trumpet sounded, the graves were open

Life and life and life! agrope in
The dusk of death, warm hands, stretched out
For swords, proved more life
Still to hope in
Beyond and behind arise with a shout
Nation of Italy, slain and buried!

Hill to hill and turret to turret
Flashing the tricolor, newly created
Beautiful Italy, calm, unhurried
Rise heroic and renovated
Rise to the final restitution

Rise prefigure the grand solution
Of earth’s municipal, insular schisms
Statesmen draping self-love’s conclusion
In cheap vernacular patriotisms
Unable to give up Judæa for Jesus

Bring us the higher example release us
Into the larger coming time:
And into Christ’s broad garment piece us
Rags of virtue as poor as crime
National selfishness, civic vaunting

No more Jew nor Greek then, taunting
Nor taunted no more England nor France!
But one confederate brotherhood planting
One flag only, to mark the advance
Onward and upward, of all humanity

For civilization perfected
Is fully developed Christianity
"Measure the frontier, " shall it be said
"Count the ships, " in national vanity?
Count the nation’s heart-beats sooner

For, though behind by a cannon or schooner
That nation still is predominant
Whose pulse beats quickest in
Zeal to oppugn or
Succour another, in wrong or want
Passing the frontier in love and abhorrence

Modena, Parma, Bologna, Florence
Open us out the wider way!
Dwarf in that chapel of old Saint Lawrence
Your Michel Angelo’s giant Day
With the grandeur of this
Day breaking o’er us!

Ye who, restrained as an ancient chorus
Mute while the coryphæus spake
Hush your separate voices before us
Sink your separate lives for the sake
Of one sole Italy’s living for ever!

Givers of coat and cloak too, never
Grudging that purple of yours at the best
By your heroic will and endeavour
Each sublimely dispossessed
That all may inherit what each surrenders!

Earth shall bless you, O noble emenders
On egotist nations! Ye shall lead
The plough of the world
And sow new splendours
Into the furrow of things for seed
Ever the richer for what ye have given

Lead us and teach us, till earth and heaven
Grow larger around us and higher above
Our sacrament-bread has a bitter leaven
We bait our traps with the name of love
Till hate it'self has a kinder meaning

Oh, this world: this cheating and screening
Of cheats! this conscience for candle-wicks
Not beacon-fires! this overweening
Of underhand diplomatical tricks
Dared for the country while
Scorned for the counter!

Oh, this envy of those who mount here
And oh, this malice to make them trip!
Rather quenching the fire there
Drying the fount here
To frozen body and thirsty lip
Than leave to a neighbour their ministration

I cry aloud in my poet passion
Viewing my England o’er Alp and sea
I loved her more in her ancient fashion:
She carries her rifles too thick for me
Who spares them so in the cause of a brother

Suspicion, panic? end this pother
The sword, kept sheathless at peace-time
Rusts none fears for himself while
He feels for another:
The brave man either fights or trusts
And wears no mail in his private chamber

Beautiful Italy! golden amber
Warm with the kisses of lover and traitor!
Thou who hast drawn us on to remember
Draw us to hope now: let us be greater
By this new future than that old story

Till truer glory replaces all glory
As the torch grows blind at the dawn of day
And the nations, rising up, their sorry
And foolish sins shall put away
As children their toys when
The teacher enters

Till Love’s one centre devour these centres
Of many self-loves and the patriot’s trick
To better his land by egotist ventures
Defamed from a virtue, shall make men sick
As the scalp at the belt of some red hero

For certain virtues have dropped to zero
Left by the sun on the mountain’s dewy side
Churchman’s charities, tender as Nero
Indian suttee, heathen suicide
Service to rights divine, proved hollow:

And Heptarchy patriotisms must follow
National voices, distinct yet dependent
Ensphering each other, as
Swallow does swallow
With circles still widening
And ever ascendant
In multiform life to united progression

These shall remain and when, in the session
Of nations, the separate language is heard
Each shall aspire, in sublime indiscretion
To help with a thought or exalt with a word
Less her own than her rival’s honour

Each Christian nation shall take upon her
The law of the Christian man in vast:
The crown of the getter shall
Fall to the donor
And last shall be first while
First shall be last
And to love best shall still be
To reign unsurpasse