Days without glory, wings its flight afar
Backward, and journeys to the years of youth
And morning. Oh, give me back once more,
Oh, give me, Lord, one hour of youth again!
For in that time I was serene and bold,
And uncontaminate, and enraptured with
The universe. I did not know the pangs
Of the proud mind, nor the sweet miseries
Of love; and I had never gathered yet,
After those fires so sweet in burning, bitter
Handfuls of ashes, that, with tardy tears
Sprinkled, at last have nourished into bloom
The solitary flower of penitence.
The baseness of the many was unknown,
And civic woes had not yet sown with salt
Life’s narrow field. Ah! then the infinite
Voices that Nature sends her worshipers
From land, from sea, and from the cloudy depths
Of heaven smote the echoing soul of youth
To music. And at the first morning sigh
Of the poor wood-lark, — at the measured bell
Of homeward flocks, and at the opaline wings
Of dragon-flies in their a�rial dances
Above the gorgeous carpets of the marsh, —
At the wind’s moan, and at the sudden gleam
Of lamps lighting in some far town by night, —
And at the dash of rain that April shoots
Through the air odorous with the smitten dust, —
My spirits rose, and glad and swift my thought
Over the sea of being sped all-sails.
There is a description of a battle, in the Hour of my Youth, which. I cannot help quoting before I leave the poem. The battle took place between the Austrians and the French on the 14th of January, 1797, in the Chiusa, a narrow valley near Verona, and the fiercest part of the fight was for the possession of the hill of Rivoli.
Clouds of smoke
Floated along the heights; and, with her wild,
Incessant echo, Chiusa still repeated
The harmony of the muskets. Rival hosts
Contended for the poverty of a hill
That scarce could give their number sepulcher;
But from that hill-crest waved the glorious locks
Of Victory. And round its bloody spurs,
Taken and lost with fierce vicissitude,
Serried and splendid, swept and tempested
Long-haired dragoons, together with the might
Of the Homeric foot, delirious
With fury; and the horses with their teeth
Tore one another, or, tossing wild their manes,
Fled with their helpless riders up the crags,
By strait and imminent paths of rock, till down,
Like angels thunder-smitten, to the depths
Of that abyss the riders fell. With slain
Was heaped the dreadful amphitheater;
The rocks dropped blood; and if with gasping breath
Some wounded swimmer beat away the waves
Weakly between him and the other shore,
The merciless riflemen from the cliffs above,
With their inexorable aim, beneath
The waters sunk him.
The Monte Circellio is part of a poem in four cantos, dispersed, it is said, to avoid the researches of the police, in which the poet recounts in picturesque verse the glories and events of the Italian land and history through which he passes. A slender but potent cord of common feeling unites the episodes, and the lament for the present fate of Italy rises into hope for her future. More than half of the poem is given to a description of the geological growth of the earth, in which the imagination of the poet has unbridled range, and in which there is a success unknown to most other attempts to poetize the facts of science. The epochs of darkness and inundation, of the monstrous races of bats and lizards, of the mammoths and the gigantic vegetation, pass, and, after thousands of years, the earth is tempered and purified to the use of man by fire; and that
Paradise of land and sea, forever
Stirred by great hopes and by volcanic fires,
Called Italy,
takes shape: its burning mountains rise, its valleys sink, its plains extend, its streams run. But first of all, the hills of Rome lifted themselves from the waters, that day when the spirit of God dwelling upon their face
Saw a fierce group of seven enkindled hills,
In number like the mystic candles lighted
Within his future temple. Then he bent
Upon that mystic pleiades of flame
His luminous regard, and spoke to it:
“Thou art to be my Rome.” The harmony
Of that note to the nebulous heights supreme,
And to the bounds of the created world,
Rolled like the voice of myriad organ-stops,
And sank, and ceased. The heavenly orbs resumed
Their daily dance and their unending journey;
A mighty rush of plumes disturbed the rest
Of the vast silence; here and there like stars
About the sky, flashed the immortal eyes
Of choral angels following after him.
The opening lines of Monte Circellio are scarcely less beautiful than the first part of Un’ Ora della mia Giovinezza, but I must content myself with only one other extract from the poem, leaving the rest to the reader of the original. The fact that every summer the Roman hospitals are filled with the unhappy peasants who descend from the hills of the Abruzzi to snatch its harvests from the feverish Campagna will help us to understand all the meaning of the following passage, though nothing could add to its pathos, unless, perhaps, the story given by Aleardi in a note at the foot of his page: “How do you live here?” asked a traveler of one of the peasants who reap the Campagna. The Abruzzese answered, “Signor, we die.”
What time,
In hours of summer, sad with so much light,
The sun beats ceaselessly upon the fields,
The harvesters, as famine urges them,
Draw hither in thousands, and they wear
The look of those that dolorously go
In exile, and already their brown eyes
Are heavy with the poison of the air.
Here never note of amorous bird consoles
Their drooping hearts; here never the gay songs
Of their Abruzzi sound to gladden these
Pathetic hands. But taciturn they toil,
Reaping the harvest for their unknown lords;
And when the weary tabor is performed,
Taciturn they retire; and not till then
Their bagpipes crown the joys of the return,
Swelling the heart with their familiar strain.
Alas! not all return, for there is one
That dying in the furrow sits, and seeks
With his last look some faithful kinsman out,
To give his life’s wage, that he carry it
Unto his trembling mother, with the last
Words of her son that comes no more. And dying,
Deserted and alone, far off he hears
His comrades going, with their pipes in time
Joyfully measuring their homeward steps.
And when in after years an orphan comes
To reap the harvest here, and feels his blade
Go quivering through the swaths of falling grain,
He weeps and thinks: haply these heavy stalks
Ripened on his unburied father’s bones.
In the poem called The Marine and Commercial Cities of Italy (Le Citt� Italiane Marinare e Commercianti), Aleardi recounts the glorious rise, the jealousies, the fratricidal wars, and the ignoble fall of Venice, Florence, Pisa, and Genoa, in strains of grandeur and pathos; he has pride in the wealth and freedom of those old queens of traffic, and scorn and lamentation for the blind selfishness that kept them Venetian, Florentine, Pisan, and Genoese, an
d never suffered them to be Italian. I take from this poem the prophetic vision of the greatness of Venice, which, according to the patriotic tradition of Sabellico, Saint Mark beheld five hundred years before the foundation of the city, when one day, journeying toward Aquileja, his ship lost her course among the islands of the lagoons. The saint looked out over those melancholy swamps, and saw the phantom of a Byzantine cathedral rest upon the reeds, while a multitudinous voice broke the silence with the Venetian battle-cry, “Viva San Marco!” The lines that follow illustrate the pride and splendor of Venetian story, and are notable, I think, for a certain lofty grace of movement and opulence of diction.
There thou shalt lie, O Saint! but compassed round
Thickly by shining groves
Of pillars; on thy regal portico,
Lifting their glittering and impatient hooves,
Corinth’s fierce steeds shall bound;
And at thy name, the hymn of future wars,
From their funereal caves
The bandits of the waves
Shall fly in exile; brought from bloody fields
Hard won and lost in far-off Palestine,
The glimmer of a thousand Arab moons
Shall fill thy broad lagoons;
And on the false Byzantine’s towers shall climb
A blind old man sublime,
Whom victory shall behold
Amidst his enemies with thy sacred flag,
All battle-rent, unrolled.
GUILIO CARCANO, ARNALDO FUSINATO AND LUIGI MERCANTINI
No one could be more opposed, in spirit and method, to Aleardo Aleardi than Giulio Carcano; but both of these poets betray love and study of English masters. In the former there is something to remind us of Milton, of Ossian, who is still believed a poet in Latin countries, and of Byron; and in the latter, Arnaud notes very obvious resemblances to Gray, Crabbe, and Wordsworth in the simplicity or the proud humility of the theme, and the courage of its treatment. The critic declares the poet’s aesthetic creed to be God, the family, and country; and in a beautiful essay on Domestic Poetry, written amidst the universal political discouragement of 1839, Carcano himself declares that in the cultivation of a popular and homelike feeling in literature the hope of Italy no less than of Italian poetry lies. He was ready to respond to the impulses of the nation’s heart, which he had felt in his communion with its purest and best life, when, in later years, its expectation gave place to action, and many of his political poems are bold and noble. But his finest poems are those which celebrate the affections of the household, and poetize the pathetic beauty of toil and poverty in city and country. He sings with a tenderness peculiarly winning of the love of mothers and children, and I shall give the best notion of the poet’s best in the following beautiful lullaby, premising merely that the title of the poem is the Italian infantile for sleep:
Sleep, sleep, sleep! my little girl:
Mother is near thee. Sleep, unfurl
Thy veil o’er the cradle where baby lies!
Dream, baby, of angels in the skies!
On the sorrowful earth, in hopeless quest,
Passes the exile without rest;
Where’er he goes, in sun or snow,
Trouble and pain beside him go.
But when I look upon thy sleep,
And hear thy breathing soft and deep,
My soul turns with a faith serene
To days of sorrow that have been,
And I feel that of love and happiness
Heaven has given my life excess;
The Lord in his mercy gave me thee,
And thou in truth art part of me!
Thou knowest not, as I bend above thee,
How much I love thee, how much I love thee;
Thou art the very life of my heart,
Thou art my joy, thou art my smart!
Thy day begins uncertain, child:
Thou art a blossom in the wild;
But over thee, with his wings abroad,
Blossom, watches the angel of God.
Ah! wherefore with so sad a face
Must thy father look on thy happiness?
In thy little bed he kissed thee now,
And dropped a tear upon thy brow.
Lord, to this mute and pensive soul
Temper the sharpness of his dole:
Give him peace whose love my life hath kept:
He too has hoped, though he has wept.
And over thee, my own delight,
Watch that sweet Mother, day and night,
To whom the exiles consecrate
Altar and heart in every fate.
By her name I have called my little girl;
But on life’s sea, in the tempest’s whirl,
Thy helpless mother, my darling, may
Only tremble and only pray!
Sleep, sleep, sleep! my baby dear;
Dream of the light of some sweet star.
Sleep, sleep! and I will keep
Thoughtful vigils above thy sleep.
Oh, in the days that are to come,
With unknown trial and unknown doom,
Thy little heart can ne’er love me
As thy mother loves and shall love thee!
II
Arnaldo Fusinato of Padua has written for the most part comic poetry, his principal piece of this sort being one in which he celebrates and satirizes the student-life at the University of Padua. He had afterward to make a formal reparation to the students, which he did in a poem singing their many virtues. The original poem of The Student is a rather lively series of pictures, from which we learn that it was once the habit of studious youth at Padua, when freshmen, or matricolini, to be terrible dandies, to swear aloud upon the public ways, to pass whole nights at billiards, to be noisy at the theater, to stand treat for the Seniors, joyfully to lend these money, and to acquire knowledge of the world at any cost. Later, they advanced to the dignity of breaking street-lamps and of being arrested by the Austrian garrison, for in Padua the students were under a kind of martial law. Sometimes they were expelled; they lost money at play, and wrote deceitful letters to their parents for more; they shunned labor, and failed to take degrees. But we cannot be interested in traits so foreign to what I understand is our own student-life. Generally, the comic as well as the sentimental poetry of Fusinato deals with incidents of popular life; and, of course, it has hits at the fleeting fashions and passing sensations: for example, Il Bloomerismo is satirized.
The poem which I translate, however, is in a different strain from any of these. It will be remembered that when the Austrians returned to take Venice in 1849, after they had been driven out for eighteen months, the city stood a bombardment of many weeks, contesting every inch of the approach with the invaders. But the Venetians were very few in number, and poorly equipped; a famine prevailed among them; the cholera broke out, and raged furiously; the bombs began to drop into the square of St. Mark, and then the Venetians yielded, and ran up the white flag on the dearly contested lagoon bridge, by which the railway traveler enters the city. The poet is imagined in one of the little towns on the nearest main-land.
The twilight is deepening, still is the wave;
I sit by the window, mute as by a grave;
Silent, companionless, secret I pine;
Through tears where thou liest I look, Venice mine.
On the clouds brokenly strewn through the west
Dies the last ray of the sun sunk to rest;
And a sad sibilance under the moon
Sighs from the broken heart of the lagoon.
Out of the city a boat draweth near:
“You of the gondola! tell us what cheer!”
“Bread lacks, the cholera deadlier grows;
From the lagoon bridge the white banner blows.”
No, no, nevermore on so great woe,
Bright sun of Italy, nevermore glow!
But o’er Venetian hopes shattered so soon,
Moan in thy sorrow forever, lagoon!
Venice, to thee comes at last the last hour;
Martyr illustrious, in thy foe’s power;
Bread lacks, the cholera deadlier grows;
From the lagoon bridge the white banner blows.
Not all the battle-flames over thee streaming;
Not all the numberless bolts o’er thee screaming;
Not for these terrors thy free days are dead:
Long live Venice! She’s dying for bread!
On thy immortal page, sculpture, O Story,
Others’iniquity, Venice’s glory;
And three times infamous ever be he
Who triumphed by famine, O Venice, o’er thee.
Long live Venice! Undaunted she fell;
Bravely she fought for her banner and well;
But bread lacks; the cholera deadlier grows;
From the lagoon bridge the white banner blows.
And now be shivered upon the stone here
Till thou be free again, O lyre I bear.
Unto thee, Venice, shall be my last song,
To thee the last kiss and the last tear belong.
Exiled and lonely, from hence I depart,
But Venice forever shall live in my heart;
In my heart’s sacred place Venice shall be
As is the face of my first love to me.
But the wind rises, and over the pale
Face of its waters the deep sends a wail;
Breaking, the chords shriek, and the voice dies.
On the lagoon bridge the white banner flies!
III
Among the later Italian poets is Luigi Mercantini, of Palermo, who has written almost entirely upon political themes — events of the different revolutions and attempts at revolution in which Italian history so abounds. I have not read him so thoroughly as to warrant me in speaking very confidently about him, but from the examination which I have given his poetry, I think that he treats his subjects with as little inflation as possible, and he now and then touches a point of naturalness — the high-water mark of balladry, to which modern poets, with their affected unaffectedness and elaborate simplicity, attain only with the greatest pains and labor. Such a triumph of Mercantini’s is this poem which I am about to give. It celebrates the daring and self-sacrifice of three hundred brave young patriots, led by Carlo Pisacane, who landed on the coast of Naples in 1857, for the purpose of exciting a revolution against the Bourbons, and were all killed. In a note the poet reproduces the pledge signed by these young heroes, which is so fine as not to be marred even by their dramatic, almost theatrical, consciousness.
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 1404