ITALY AND THE WORLD.

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 Judaea 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 coryphaeus 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 itself 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 unsurpassed.