Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Page 121
Fisher of fish wouldst thou live instead?
Haggling for pence with the other Ten,
Cheating the market at so much a head,
Griping the Bag of the traitor Dead?
VIII.
At the triple crow of the Gallic cock
Thou weep’st not, thou, though thine eyes be dazed:
What bird comes next in the tempest-shock?
— Vultures! see, — as when Romulus gazed, —
To inaugurate Rome for a world amazed!
THE KING’S GIFT.
I.
TERESA, ah, Teresita!
Now what has the messenger brought her,
Our Garibaldi’s young daughter,
To make her stop short in her singing?
Will she not once more repeat a
Verse from that hymn of our hero’s,
Setting the souls of us ringing?
Break off the song where the tear rose?
Ah, Teresita!
II.
A young thing, mark, is Teresa:
Her eyes have caught fire, to be sure, in
That necklace of jewels from Turin,
Till blind their regard to us men is.
But still she remembers to raise a
Sly look to her father, and note —
‘Could she sing on as well about Venice,
Yet wear such a flame at her throat?
Decide for Teresa.’
III.
Teresa! ah, Teresita!
His right hand has paused on her head —
‘Accept it, my daughter,’ he said;
‘Ay, wear it, true child of thy mother!
Then sing, till all start to their feet, a
New verse ever bolder and freer!
King Victor’s no king like another,
But verily noble as we are,
Child, Teresita!’
PARTING LOVERS.
Siena, 1860.
I.
I LOVE thee, love thee, Giulio;
Some call me cold, and some demure;
And if thou hast ever guessed that so
I loved thee.. well, the proof was poor,
And no one could be sure.
II.
Before thy song (with shifted rhymes
To suit my name) did I undo
The persian? If it stirred sometimes,
Thou hast not seen a hand push through
A foolish flower or two.
III.
My mother listening to my sleep,
Heard nothing but a sigh at night, —
The short sigh rippling on the deep,
When hearts run out of breath and sight
Of men, to God’s clear light.
IV.
When others named thee, — thought thy brows
Were straight, thy smile was tender,— ‘Here
He comes between the vineyard-rows!’
I said not ‘ Ay,’ nor waited, Dear,
To feel thee step too near.
V.
I left such things to bolder girls, —
Olivia or Clotilda. Nay,
When that Clotilda, through her curls,
Held both thine eyes in hers one day,
I marvelled, let me say.
VI.
I could not try the woman’s, trick:
Between us straightway fell the blush
Which kept me separate, blind and sick.
A wind came with thee in a flush,
As blown through Sinai’s bush.
VII.
But now that Italy invokes
Her young men to go forth and chase
The foe or perish, — nothing chokes
My voice, or drives me from the place.
I look thee in the face.
VIII.
I love thee! It is understood,
Confest: I do not shrink or start.
No blushes! all my body’s blood
Has gone to greaten this poor heart,
That, loving, we may part.
IX.
Our Italy invokes the youth
To die if need be. Still there’s room,
Though earth is strained with dead in truth:
Since twice the lilies were in bloom
They have not grudged a tomb.
X.
And many a plighted maid and wife
And mother, who can say since then
‘My country,’ — cannot say through life
‘My son,’ ‘my spouse,’ ‘my flower of men,’
And not weep dumb again.
XI.
Heroic males the country bears, —
But daughters give up more than sons:
Flags wave, drums beat, and unawares
You flash your souls out with the guns,
And take your Heaven at once.
XII.
But we! — we empty heart and home
Of life’s life, love! We bear to think
You’re gone, — to feel you may not come, —
To hear the door-latch stir and clink,
Yet no more you!.. nor sink.
XIII.
Dear God! when Italy is one,
Complete, content from bound to bound,
Suppose, for my share, earth’s undone
By one grave in’t! — as one small wound
Will kill a man, ‘tis found.
XIV.
What then? If love’s delight must end,
At least we’ll clear its truth from flaws.
I love thee, love thee, sweetest friend!
Now take my sweetest without pause,
And help the nation’s cause.
XV.
And thus, of noble Italy
We’ll both be worthy! Let her show
The future how we made her free,
Not sparing life.. nor Giulio,
Nor this.. this heartbreak! Go.
MOTHER AND POET.
Turin, after News from Gaeta, 1861.
I.
DEAD! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!
II.
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said;
But this woman, this, who is agonized here,
— The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
For ever instead.
III.
What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
Ah boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you pressed,
And I proud, by that test.
IV.
What art’s for a woman? To hold on her knees
Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat,
Cling, strangle a little! to sew by degrees
And ‘broider the long-clothes and neat little coat;
To dream and to doat.
V.
To teach them.. It stings there! I made them indeed
Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt,
That a country’s a thing men should die for at need.
I prated of liberty, rights, and about
The tyrant cast out.
VI.
And when their eyes flashed.. O my beautiful eyes!..
I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels
Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise
When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels!
God, how the house feels!
VII.
At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled
With my kisses, — of camp-life and glory, and how
They both loved me; and, soon coming home to be spoiled,
With their green laurel-bough.
VIII.
Then was triumph at Turin: ‘Ancona was free!’
And some one came out of the cheers in the street,
With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,
While they cheered in the street.
IX.
I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.
X.
And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand, ‘I was not to faint, —
One loved me for two — would be with me ere long:
And Viva l’Italia! — he died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint.’
XI.
My Nanni would add, ‘he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls, — was imprest
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
And how ‘twas impossible, quite dispossessed,
To live on for the rest.’
XII.
On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta: — Shot.
Tell his mother. Ah, ah, ‘ his,” their’ mother, — not ‘mine,’
No voice says ‘My mother’ again to me. What!
You think Guido forgot?
XIII.
Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,
They drop earth’s affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through THAT Love and Sorrow which reconciled so
The Above and Below.
XIV.
O Christ of the five wounds, who look’dst through the dark
To the face of Thy mother! consider, I pray,
How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,
Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away,
And no last word to say!
XV.
Both boys dead? but that’s out of nature. We all
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
‘Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;
And, when Italy’s made, for what end is it done
If we have not a son?
XVI.
Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta’s taken, what then?
When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport
Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?
When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short?
XVII.
When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,
When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green and
red,
When you have your country from mountain to sea,
When King Victor has Italy’s crown on his head,
(And I have my Dead) —
XVIII.
What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low,
And burn your lights faintly! My country is there,
Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow:
My Italy’s there, with my brave civic Pair,
To disfranchise despair!
XIX.
Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
Into wail such as this — and we sit on forlorn
When the man-child is born.
XX.
Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me!
[This was Laura Savio, of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose sons were killed at Ancona and Graeta.
NATURE’S REMORSES.
Rome, 1861.
I.
HER soul was bred by a throne, and fed
From the sucking-bottle used in her race
On starch and water (for mother’s milk
Which gives a larger growth instead),
And, out of the natural liberal grace,
Was swaddled away in violet silk.
II.
And young and kind, and royally blind,
Forth she stepped from her palace-door
On three-piled carpet of compliments,
Curtains of incense drawn by the wind
In between her for evermore
And daylight issues of events.
III.
On she drew, as a queen might do,
To meet a Dream of Italy, —
Of magical town and musical wave,
Where even a god, his amulet blue
Of shining sea, in an ecstasy
Dropt and forgot in a nereid’s cave.
IV.
Down she goes, as the soft wind blows,
To live more smoothly than mortals can,
To love and to reign as queen and wife,
To wear a crown that smells of a rose,
And still, with a sceptre as light as a fan,
Beat sweet time to the song of life.
V.
What is this? As quick as a kiss
Falls the smile from her girlish mouth!
The lion-people has left its lair,
Roaring along her garden of bliss,
And the fiery underworld of the South
Scorched a way to the upper air.
VI.
And a fire-stone ran in the form of a man,
Burningly, boundingly, fatal and fell,
Bowling the kingdom down! Where was the king?
She had heard somewhat, since life began,
Of terrors on earth and horrors in hell,
But never, never of such a thing!
VII.
You think she dropped when her dream was stopped,
When the blotch of Bourbon blood inlay,
Lividly rank, her new lord’s cheek?
Not so. Her high heart overtopped
The royal part she had come to play.
Only the men in that hour were weak.
VIII.
And twice a wife by her ravaged life,
And twice a queen by her kingdom lost,
She braved the shock and the counter-shock
Of hero and traitor, bullet and knife,
‘ While Italy pushed, like a vengeful ghost,
That son of the Cursed from Gaeta’s rock.
IX.
What will ye give her, who could not deliver,
German Princesses? A laurel-wreath
All over-scored with your signatures,
Graces, Serenities, Highnesses ever?
Mock her not, fresh from the truth of Death,
Conscious of dignities higher than yours.
X.
What will ye put in your casket shut,
Ladies of Paris, in sympathy’s name?
Guizot’s daughter, what have you brought her?
Withered immortelles, long ago cut
For guilty dynasties perished in shame,
Putrid to memory, Guizot’s daughter?
XI.
Ah poor queen! so young and serene!
What shall we do for her, now hope’s done,
Standing at Rome in these ruins old,
She too a ruin and no more a queen?
Leave her that diadem made by the sun
Turning her hair to an innocent gold.
XII.
Ay! bring close to her, as ‘twere a rose, to her,
Yon f
ree child from an Apennine city
Singing for Italy, — dumb in the place!
Something like solace, let us suppose, to her
Given, in that homage of wonder and pity,
By his pure eyes to her beautiful face.
XIII.
Nature, excluded, savagely brooded,
Ruined all queendom and dogmas of state, —
Then in reaction remorseful and mild,
Rescues the womanhood, nearly eluded,
Shows her what’s sweetest in womanly fate —
Sunshine from Heaven, and the eyes of a child.
THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH.
THE LAST POEM.
Rome, May, 1861.
I
‘NOW give us lands where the olives grow,’
Cried the North to the South,
‘Where the sun with a golden mouth can blow
Blue bubbles of grapes down a vineyard-row!’
Cried the North to the South. 5
‘Now give us men from the sunless plain,’
Cried the South to the North,
‘By need of work in the snow and the rain,
Made strong, and brave by familiar pain!’
Cried the South to the North. 10
II
‘Give lucider hills and intenser seas,’
Said the North to the South,