Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  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 its 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.[9]

  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[10]

  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 spirits who tread firm to ends foreshown,

  And use the name of greatness unforgot,

  To meditate what greatness may be done.

  For Dante sits 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 Caesars 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,

&
nbsp; 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