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Relieved her wing till found; without thy light My paradise had still been incomplete. Since my tenth sun gave summer to my sight Thou wert my life, the essence of my thought, Loved ere I knew the name of love, and bright Still in these dim old eyes, now overwrought With the world's war, and years, and banishment, And tears for thee, by other woes untaught: For mine is not a nature to be bent

By tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd;
And though the long, long conflict hath been spent
In vain, and never more, save when the cloud
Which overhangs the Apennine, my mind's eye
Pierces to fancy Florence, once so proud

Of me, can I return, though but to die,
Unto my native soil, they have not yet
Quench'd the old exile's spirit, stern and high.
But the sun, though not overcast, must set,
And the night cometh; I am old in days,
And deeds, and contemplation, and have met
Destruction face to face in all his ways.

The world hath left me, what it found me-pure;
And if I have not gather'd yet its praise,
I sought it not by any baser lure.

Man wrongs, and Time avenges; and my name
May form a monument not all obscure,

Though such was not my ambition's end or aim,
To add to the vain glorious list of those
Who dabble in the pettiness of fame,

And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows
Their sail, and deem it glory to be class'd
With conquerors, and virtue's other foes,

In bloody chronicles of ages past.

I would have had my Florence great and free:5
Oh Florence! Florence! unto me thou wast
Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He
Wept over, "but thou wouldst not.'
Gathers its young, I would have gather'd thee
Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard

As the bird

My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce, Against the breast that cherish'd thee was stirr'd Thy venom, and state thou didst amerce,

my

And doom this body forfeit to the fire.
Alas! how bitter is his country's curse
To him who for that country would expire!
But did not merit to expire by her,

And loves her, loves her even in her ire.

The day may come when she will cease to err,

The day may come she would be proud to have

The dust she dooms to scatter, and transfer
Of him, whom she denied a home, the grave.
But this shall not be granted; let my dust
Lie where it falls; nor shall the soil which gave
Me breath, but in her sudden fury thrust

Me forth to breathe elsewhere, so reassume
My indignant bones, because her angry gust
Forsooth is over, and repeal'd her doom.

No, she denied me what was mine-my roof, And shall not have what is not hers-my tomb. Too long her armed wrath hath kept aloof

The breast which would have bled for her, the heart That beat, the mind that was temptation-proof, The man who fought, toil'd, travell'd, and each part Of a true citizen fulfill'd, and saw

For his reward the Guelf's ascendant art Pass his destruction even into a law.

These things are not made for forgetfulness— Florence shall be forgotten first; too raw The wound, too deep the wrong, and the distress Of such endurance too prolong'd, to make My pardon greater, her injustice less, Though late repented: yet-yet for her sake I feel some fonder yearnings, and for thine, My own Beatrice, I would hardly take Vengeance upon the land which once was mine, And still is hallow'd by thy dust's return, Which would protect the murderess like a shrine, And save ten thousand foes by thy sole urn. Though, like old Marius from Minturnæ's marsh And Carthage' ruins, my lone breast may burn At times with evil feelings hot and harsh,

And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foe Writhe in a dream before me, and o'er-arch My brow with hopes of triumph,-let them go! Such are the last infirmities of those

Who long have suffer'd more than mortal woe, And yet, being mortal still, have no repose But on the pillow of Revenge-Revenge, Who sleeps to dream of blood, and waking glows With the oft-baffled, slakeless thirst of change,

When we shall mount again, and they that trod Be trampled on, while Death and Até range O'er humbled heads and sever'd necks.-Great God! Take these thoughts from me-to thy hands I yield My many wrongs, and thine almighty rod Will fall on those who smote me,-be my shield! As thou hast been in peril, and in pain, In turbulent cities, and the tented field—

In toil, and many troubles borne in vain

For Florence. I appeal from her to Thee!
Thee, whom I late saw in thy loftiest reign,
Even in that glorious vision, which to see
And live was never granted until now,

And yet thou hast permitted this to me.
Alas! with what a weight upon my brow
The sense of earth and earthly things comes back,
Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low,
The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack,
Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect
Of half a century bloody and black,
And the frail few years I may yet expect
Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear ;
For I have been too long and deeply wreck'd
On the lone rock of desolate despair
To lift my eyes more to the passing sail
Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare;
Nor raise my voice-for who would heed
I am not of this people, nor this age;
And yet my harpings will unfold a tale
Which shall preserve these times, when not a page

Of their perturbed annals could attract

An eye to gaze upon their civil rage,

my

Did not my verse embalm full many an act

wail?

Worthless as they who wrought it: 't is the doom
Of spirits of my order to be rack'd

In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone;
Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of him-who now is but a name,
And, wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,
Spread his-by him unheard, unheeded-fame;
And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die
Is nothing; but to wither thus-to tame
My mind down from its own infinity—
To live in narrow ways with little men,
A common sight to every common eye,
A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den,
Ripp'd from all kindred, from all home, all things
That make communion sweet, and soften pain-

To feel me in the solitude of kings,

Without the power that makes them bear a crown—
To envy every dove his nest and wings

Which waft him where the Apennine looks down
On Arno, till he perches, it may be,
Within my all-inexorable town,

Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she,

5

Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought
Destruction for a dowry-this to see
And feel, and know without repair, hath taught
A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free :
I have not vilely found, nor basely sought-
They made an exile-not a slave of me.

CANTO II.

THE spirit of the fervent days of old,

When words were things that came to pass, and thought Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold Their children's children's doom already brought Forth from the abyss of time which is to be; The chaos of events, where lie half-wrought Shapes that must undergo mortality;

What the great seers of Israel wore within, That spirit was on them, and is on me : And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din

Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed, This voice from out the wilderness, the sin Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed, The only guerdon I have ever known.

Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed,

Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown

With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget

In thine irreparable wrongs my own.

We can have but one country, and even yet

Thou 'rt mine-my bones shall be within thy breast,
My soul within thy language, which once set

With our old Roman sway in the wide west;
But I will make another tongue arise
As lofty and more sweet, in which exprest
The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,
Shall find alike such sounds for every theme,
That every word, as brilliant as thy skies,
Shall realise a poet's proudest dream,

And make thee Europe's nightingale of song;
So that all present speech to thine shall seem
The note of meaner birds, and every tongue

Confess its barbarism when compared with thine. This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong, Thy Tuscan bard, the banish'd Ghibelline.

yet supine

Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries
Is rent,- -a thousand years, which
Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise,
Heaving in dark and sullen undulation,
Float from eternity into these eyes;

The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station,
The unborn earthquake yet is in the womb,

The bloody chaos yet expects creation, But all things are disposing for thy doom; The elements await but for the word,

"Let there be darkness!" and thou grow'st a tomb! Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword,

Thou, Italy! so fair that paradise,

Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored : Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice?

Thou! Italy! whose ever-golden fields,

Plough'd by the sunbeams solely, would suffice For the world's granary; thou whose sky heaven gilds With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue; Thou! in whose pleasant places summer builds Her palace, in whose cradle empire grew,

And form'd the eternal city's ornaments From spoils of kings whom freemen overthrew ; Birth-place of heroes, sanctuary of saints,

Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made
Her home; thou, all which fondest fancy paints,
And finds her prior vision but portray'd

In feeble colours, when the eye-from the Alp
Of horrid show, and rock and shaggy shade
Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp
Nods to the storm-dilates and dotes o'er thee,
And wistfully implores, as 't were, for help

To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,

Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still

The more approach'd, and dearest were they free. Thou-thou must wither to each tyrant's will:

The Goth hath been,-the German, Frank, and Hun,
Are yet to come, and on the imperial hill
Ruin, already proud of the deeds done

By the old barbarians, there awaits the new,
Throned on the Palatine, while, lost and won,
Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue
Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter
Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue,
And deepens into red the saffron water
Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest,
And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,
Vow'd to their god, have shrieking fled, and ceased
Their ministry the nations take their prey,

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