Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Page 115
I.
You’ll take back your Grand-duke?
I made the treaty upon it.
Just venture a quiet rebuke;
Dall’ Ongaro write him a sonnet;
Ricasoli gently explain
Some need of the constitution:
He’ll swear to it over again,
Providing an “easy solution.”
You’ll call back the Grand-duke.
II.
You’ll take back your Grand-duke?
I promised the Emperor Francis
To argue the case by his book,
And ask you to meet his advances.
The Ducal cause, we know
(Whether you or he be the wronger),
Has very strong points; — although
Your bayonets, there, have stronger.
You’ll call back the Grand-duke.
You’ll take back your Grand-duke?
He is not pure altogether.
For instance, the oath which he took
(In the Forty-eight rough weather)
He’d “nail your flag to his mast,”
Then softly scuttled the boat you
Hoped to escape in at last,
And both by a “Proprio motu.”
You’ll call back the Grand-duke.
IV.
You’ll take back your Grand-duke?
The scheme meets nothing to shock it
In this smart letter, look,
We found in Radetsky’s pocket;
Where his Highness in sprightly style
Of the flower of his Tuscans wrote,
“These heads be the hottest in file;
Pray shoot them the quickest.” Quote,
And call back the Grand-duke.
V.
You’ll take back your Grand-duke?
There are some things to object to.
He cheated, betrayed, and forsook,
Then called in the foe to protect you.
He taxed you for wines and for meats
Throughout that eight years’ pastime
Of Austria’s drum in your streets —
Of course you remember the last time
You called back your Grand-duke?
VI.
You’ll take back the Grand-duke?
It is not race he is poor in,
Although he never could brook
The patriot cousin at Turin.
His love of kin you discern,
By his hate of your flag and me —
So decidedly apt to turn
All colours at the sight of the Three.[14]
You’ll call back the Grand-duke.
VII.
You’ll take back your Grand-duke?
‘T was weak that he fled from the Pitti;
But consider how little he shook
At thought of bombarding your city!
And, balancing that with this,
The Christian rule is plain for us;
... Or the Holy Father’s Swiss
Have shot his Perugians in vain for us.
You’ll call back the Grand-duke.
VIII.
Pray take back your Grand-duke.
— I, too, have suffered persuasion.
All Europe, raven and rook,
Screeched at me armed for your nation.
Your cause in my heart struck spurs;
I swept such warnings aside for you:
My very child’s eyes, and Hers,
Grew like my brother’s who died for you.
You’ll call back the Grand-duke?
IX.
You’ll take back your Grand-duke?
My French fought nobly with reason, —
Left many a Lombardy nook
Red as with wine out of season.
Little we grudged what was done there,
Paid freely your ransom of blood:
Our heroes stark in the sun there
We would not recall if we could.
You’ll call back the Grand-duke?
X.
You’ll take back your Grand-duke?
His son rode fast as he got off
That day on the enemy’s hook,
When I had an epaulette shot off.
Though splashed (as I saw him afar — no
Near) by those ghastly rains,
The mark, when you’ve washed him in Arno,
Will scarcely be larger than Cain’s.
You’ll call back the Grand-duke?
XI.
You’ll take back your Grand-duke?
‘T will be so simple, quite beautiful:
The shepherd recovers his crook,
... If you should be sheep, and dutiful.
I spoke a word worth chalking
On Milan’s wall — but stay,
Here’s Poniatowsky talking, —
You’ll listen to him to-day,
And call back the Grand-duke.
XII.
You’ll take back your Grand-duke?
Observe, there’s no one to force it, —
Unless the Madonna, Saint Luke
Drew for you, choose to endorse it.
I charge you, by great Saint Martino
And prodigies quickened by wrong,
Remember your Dead on Ticino;
Be worthy, be constant, be strong —
Bah! — call back the Grand-duke!!
CHRISTMAS GIFTS.
~hos basilei, hos theps, hos nekrps.~
GREGORY NAZIANZEN.
I.
The Pope on Christmas Day
Sits in Saint Peter’s chair;
But the peoples murmur and say
“Our souls are sick and forlorn,
And who will show us where
Is the stable where Christ was born?”
II.
The star is lost in the dark;
The manger is lost in the straw;
The Christ cries faintly ... hark!...
Through bands that swaddle and strangle —
But the Pope in the chair of awe
Looks down the great quadrangle.
III.
The Magi kneel at his foot,
Kings of the East and West,
But, instead of the angels (mute
Is the “Peace on earth” of their song),
The peoples, perplexed and opprest,
Are sighing “How long, how long?”
IV.
And, instead of the kine, bewilder in
Shadow of aisle and dome,
The bear who tore up the children,
The fox who burnt up the corn,
And the wolf who suckled at Rome
Brothers to slay and to scorn.
V.
Cardinals left and right of him,
Worshippers round and beneath,
The silver trumpets at sight of him
Thrill with a musical blast:
But the people say through their teeth,
“Trumpets? we wait for the Last!”
VI.
He sits in the place of the Lord,
And asks for the gifts of the time;
Gold, for the haft of a sword
To win back Romagna averse,
Incense, to sweeten a crime,
And myrrh, to embitter a curse.
VII.
Then a king of the West said “Good! —
I bring thee the gifts of the time;
Red, for the patriot’s blood,
Green, for the martyr’s crown,
White, for the dew and the rime,
When the morning of God comes down.”
VIII.
— O mystic tricolor bright!
The Pope’s heart quailed like a man’s;
The cardinals froze at the sight,
Bowing their tonsures hoary:
And the eyes in the peacock-fans
Winked at the alien glory.
IX.
But the peoples exclaimed in hope,
“Now blessed be he who has brought
These gifts of the time to the Pope,
When our souls were sick and forlorn.
— And here is the star we sought,
To show us where Christ was born!”
ITALY AND THE WORLD.
I.
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.
II.
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.
III.
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.
IV.
“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.
V.
“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.
VI.
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!
VII.
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.
VIII.
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.
IX.
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.
X.
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.
XI.
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.
XII.
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.
XIII.
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!
XIV.
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!
XV.
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!
XVI.
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.
XVII.
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.
XVIII.
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!
XIX.
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.
XX.
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.
XXI.
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.
XXII.
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.
XXIII.
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.
XXIV.
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.
XXV.
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:
XXVI.
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, —
XXVII.
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.
XXVIII.
Each Christian nation shall take upon her
The law of the Christian man in vast:<
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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.
A CURSE FOR A NATION.
PROLOGUE.
I heard an angel speak last night,
And he said “Write!
Write a Nation’s curse for me,
And send it over the Western Sea.”
I faltered, taking up the word:
“Not so, my lord!
If curses must be, choose another
To send thy curse against my brother.
“For I am bound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to me.”
“Therefore,” the voice said, “shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
From the summits of love a curse is driven,
As lightning is from the tops of heaven.”
“Not so,” I answered. “Evermore
My heart is sore
For my own land’s sins: for little feet
Of children bleeding along the street:
“For parked-up honours that gainsay
The right of way:
For almsgiving through a door that is
Not open enough for two friends to kiss:
“For love of freedom which abates
Beyond the Straits:
For patriot virtue starved to vice on
Self-praise, self-interest, and suspicion: