The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume IV Part 11

But wherefore should we look out any more From Casa Guidi windows? Shut them straight, And let us sit down by the folded door, And veil our saddened faces and, so, wait What next the judgment-heavens make ready for.

I have grown too weary of these windows. Sights Come thick enough and clear enough in thought, Without the suns.h.i.+ne; souls have inner lights.

And since the Grand-duke has come back and brought This army of the North which thus requites His filial South, we leave him to be taught.

His South, too, has learnt something certainly, Whereof the practice will bring profit soon; And peradventure other eyes may see, From Casa Guidi windows, what is done Or undone. Whatsoever deeds they be, Pope Pius will be glorified in none.

Record that gain, Mazzini!--it shall top Some heights of sorrow. Peter's rock, so named, Shall lure no vessel any more to drop Among the breakers. Peter's chair is shamed Like any vulgar throne the nations lop To pieces for their firewood unreclaimed,-- And, when it burns too, we shall see as well In Italy as elsewhere. Let it burn.

The cross, accounted still adorable, Is Christ's cross only!--if the thief's would earn Some stealthy genuflexions, we rebel; And here the impenitent thief's has had its turn, As G.o.d knows; and the people on their knees Scoff and toss back the crosiers stretched like yokes To press their heads down lower by degrees.

So Italy, by means of these last strokes, Escapes the danger which preceded these, Of leaving captured hands in cloven oaks,-- Of leaving very souls within the buckle Whence bodies struggled outward,--of supposing That freemen may like bondsmen kneel and truckle, And then stand up as usual, without losing An inch of stature.

Those whom she-wolves suckle Will bite as wolves do in the grapple-closing Of adverse interests. This at last is known (Thank Pius for the lesson), that albeit Among the popedom's hundred heads of stone Which blink down on you from the roof's retreat In Siena's tiger-striped cathedral, Joan And Borgia 'mid their fellows you may greet, A harlot and a devil,--you will see Not a man, still less angel, grandly set With open soul to render man more free.

The fishers are still thinking of the net, And, if not thinking of the hook too, we Are counted somewhat deeply in their debt; But that's a rare case--so, by hook and crook They take the advantage, agonizing Christ By rustier nails than those of Cedron's brook, I' the people's body very cheaply priced,-- And quote high priesthood out of Holy book, While buying death-fields with the sacrificed.

Priests, priests,--there's no such name!--G.o.d's own, except Ye take most vainly. Through heaven's lifted gate The priestly ephod in sole glory swept When Christ ascended, entered in, and sate (With victor face sublimely overwept) At Deity's right hand, to mediate, He alone, He for ever. On His breast The Urim and the Thummim, fed with fire From the full G.o.dhead, flicker with the unrest Of human pitiful heart-beats. Come up higher, All Christians! Levi's tribe is dispossest.

That solitary alb ye shall admire, But not cast lots for. The last chrism, poured right, Was on that Head, and poured for burial And not for domination in men's sight.

What _are_ these churches? The old temple-wall Doth overlook them juggling with the sleight Of surplice, candlestick and altar-pall; East church and west church, ay, north church and south, Rome's church and England's,--let them all repent, And make concordats 'twixt their soul and mouth, Succeed Saint Paul by working at the tent, Become infallible guides by speaking truth, And excommunicate their pride that bent And cramped the souls of men.

Why, even here Priestcraft burns out, the twined linen blazes; Not, like asbestos, to grow white and clear, But all to peris.h.!.+--while the fire-smell raises To life some swooning spirits who, last year, Lost breath and heart in these church-stifled places.

Why, almost, through this Pius, we believed The priesthood could be an honest thing, he smiled So saintly while our corn was being sheaved For his own granaries! Showing now defiled His hireling hands, a better help's achieved Than if they blessed us shepherd-like and mild.

False doctrine, strangled by its own amen, Dies in the throat of all this nation. Who Will speak a pope's name as they rise again?

What woman or what child will count him true?

What dreamer praise him with the voice or pen?

What man fight for him?--Pius takes his due.

Record that gain, Mazzini!--Yes, but first Set down thy people's faults; set down the want Of soul-conviction; set down aims dispersed, And incoherent means, and valour scant Because of scanty faith, and schisms accursed That wrench these brother-hearts from covenant With freedom and each other. Set down this, And this, and see to overcome it when The seasons bring the fruits thou wilt not miss If wary. Let no cry of patriot men Distract thee from the stern a.n.a.lysis Of ma.s.ses who cry only! keep thy ken Clear as thy soul is virtuous. Heroes' blood Splashed up against thy n.o.ble brow in Rome; Let such not blind thee to an interlude Which was not also holy, yet did come 'Twixt sacramental actions,--brotherhood Despised even there, and something of the doom Of Remus in the trenches. Listen now-- Rossi died silent near where Caesar died.

HE did not say "My Brutus, is it thou?"

But Italy unquestioned testified "_I_ killed him! _I_ am Brutus.--I avow."

At which the whole world's laugh of scorn replied "A poor maimed copy of Brutus!"

Too much like, Indeed, to be so unlike! too unskilled At Philippi and the honest battle-pike, To be so skilful where a man is killed Near Pompey's statue, and the daggers strike At unawares i' the throat. Was thus fulfilled An omen once of Michel Angelo?-- When Marcus Brutus he conceived complete, And strove to hurl him out by blow on blow Upon the marble, at Art's thunderheat, Till haply (some pre-shadow rising slow Of what his Italy would fancy meet To be called BRUTUS) straight his plastic hand Fell back before his prophet-soul, and left A fragment, a maimed Brutus,--but more grand Than this, so named at Rome, was!

Let thy weft Present one woof and warp, Mazzini! Stand With no man hankering for a dagger's heft, No, not for Italy!--nor stand apart, No, not for the Republic!--from those pure Brave men who hold the level of thy heart In patriot truth, as lover and as doer, Albeit they will not follow where thou art As extreme theorist. Trust and distrust fewer; And so bind strong and keep unstained the cause Which (G.o.d's sign granted) war-trumps newly blown Shall yet annunciate to the world's applause.

But now, the world is busy; it has grown A Fair-going world. Imperial England draws The flowing ends of the earth from Fez, Canton, Delhi and Stockholm, Athens and Madrid, The Russias and the vast Americas, As if a queen drew in her robes amid Her golden cincture,--isles, peninsulas, Capes, continents, far inland countries hid By jasper-sands and hills of chrysopras, All trailing in their splendours through the door Of the gorgeous Crystal Palace. Every nation, To every other nation strange of yore, Gives face to face the civic salutation, And holds up in a proud right hand before That congress the best work which she can fas.h.i.+on By her best means. "These corals, will you please To match against your oaks? They grow as fast Within my wilderness of purple seas."-- "This diamond stared upon me as I pa.s.sed (As a live G.o.d's eye from a marble frieze) Along a dark of diamonds. Is it cla.s.sed?"-- "I wove these stuffs so subtly that the gold Swims to the surface of the silk like cream And curdles to fair patterns. Ye behold!"-- "These delicatest muslins rather seem Than be, you think? Nay, touch them and be bold, Though such veiled Chakhi's face in Hafiz' dream."-- "These carpets--you walk slow on them like kings, Inaudible like spirits, while your foot Dips deep in velvet roses and such things."-- "Even Apollonius might commend this flute:[13]

The music, winding through the stops, upsprings To make the player very rich: compute!"

"Here's goblet-gla.s.s, to take in with your wine The very sun its grapes were ripened under: Drink light and juice together, and each fine."-- "This model of a steams.h.i.+p moves your wonder?

You should behold it crus.h.i.+ng down the brine Like a blind Jove who feels his way with thunder."-- "Here's sculpture! Ah, _we_ live too! why not throw Our life into our marbles? Art has place For other artists after Angelo."-- "I tried to paint out here a natural face; For nature includes Raffael, as we know, Not Raffael nature. Will it help my case?"-- "Methinks you will not match this steel of ours!"-- "Nor you this porcelain! One might dream the clay Retained in it the larvae of the flowers, They bud so, round the cup, the old Spring-way."-- "Nor you these carven woods, where birds in bowers With twisting snakes and climbing cupids, play."

O Magi of the east and of the west, Your incense, gold and myrrh are excellent!-- What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest?

Your hands have worked well: is your courage spent In handwork only? Have you nothing best, Which generous souls may perfect and present, And He shall thank the givers for? no light Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor Who sit in darkness when it is not night?

No cure for wicked children? Christ,--no cure!

No help for women sobbing out of sight Because men made the laws? no brothel-lure Burnt out by popular lightnings? Hast thou four No remedy, my England, for such woes?

No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound, No entrance for the exiled? no repose, Russia, for knouted Poles worked underground, And gentle ladies bleached among the snows?

No mercy for the slave, America?

No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France?

Alas, great nations have great shames, I say.

No pity, O world, no tender utterance Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way For poor Italia, baffled by mischance?

O gracious nations, give some ear to me!

You all go to your Fair, and I am one Who at the roadside of humanity Beseech your alms,--G.o.d's justice to be done.

So, prosper!

In the name of Italy, Meantime, her patriot Dead have benison.

They only have done well; and, what they did Being perfect, it shall triumph. Let them slumber: No king of Egypt in a pyramid Is safer from oblivion, though he number Full seventy cerements for a coverlid.

These Dead be seeds of life, and shall enc.u.mber The sad heart of the land until it loose The clammy clods and let out the Spring-growth In beatific green through every bruise.

The tyrant should take heed to what he doth, Since every victim-carrion turns to use, And drives a chariot, like a G.o.d made wroth, Against each piled injustice. Ay, the least, Dead for Italia, not in vain has died; Though many vainly, ere life's struggle ceased, To mad dissimilar ends have swerved aside; Each grave her nationality has pieced By its own majestic breadth, and fortified And pinned it deeper to the soil. Forlorn Of thanks be, therefore, no one of these graves!

Not Hers,--who, at her husband's side, in scorn, Outfaced the whistling shot and hissing waves, Until she felt her little babe unborn Recoil, within her, from the violent staves And bloodhounds of the world,--at which, her life Dropt inwards from her eyes and followed it Beyond the hunters. Garibaldi's wife And child died so. And now, the seaweeds fit Her body, like a proper shroud and coif, And murmurously the ebbing waters grit The little pebbles while she lies interred In the sea-sand. Perhaps, ere dying thus, She looked up in his face (which never stirred From its clenched anguish) as to make excuse For leaving him for his, if so she erred.

He well remembers that she could not choose.

A memorable grave! Another is At Genoa. There, a king may fitly lie, Who, bursting that heroic heart of his At lost Novara, that he could not die (Though thrice into the cannon's eyes for this He plunged his shuddering steed, and felt the sky Reel back between the fire-shocks), stripped away The ancestral ermine ere the smoke had cleared, And, naked to the soul, that none might say His kings.h.i.+p covered what was base and bleared With treason, went out straight an exile, yea, An exiled patriot. Let him be revered.

Yea, verily, Charles Albert has died well; And if he lived not all so, as one spoke, The sin pa.s.s softly with the pa.s.sing-bell; For he was shriven, I think, in cannon-smoke, And, taking off his crown, made visible A hero's forehead. Shaking Austria's yoke He shattered his own hand and heart. "So best,"

His last words were upon his lonely bed, I do not end like popes and dukes at least-- "Thank G.o.d for it." And now that he is dead, Admitting it is proved and manifest That he was worthy, with a discrowned head, To measure heights with patriots, let them stand Beside the man in his Oporto shroud, And each vouchsafe to take him by the hand, And kiss him on the cheek, and say aloud,-- "Thou, too, hast suffered for our native land!

My brother, thou art one of us! be proud."

Still, graves, when Italy is talked upon.

Still, still, the patriot's tomb, the stranger's hate.

Still Niobe! still fainting in the sun, By whose most dazzling arrows violate Her beauteous offspring perished! has she won Nothing but garlands for the graves, from Fate?

Nothing but death-songs?--Yes, be it understood Life throbs in n.o.ble Piedmont! while the feet Of Rome's clay image, dabbled soft in blood, Grow flat with dissolution and, as meet, Will soon be shovelled off like other mud, To leave the pa.s.sage free in church and street.

And I, who first took hope up in this song, Because a child was singing one ... behold, The hope and omen were not, haply, wrong!

Poets are soothsayers still, like those of old Who studied flights of doves; and creatures young And tender, mighty meanings may unfold.

The sun strikes, through the windows, up the floor; Stand out in it, my own young Florentine, Not two years old, and let me see thee more!

It grows along thy amber curls, to s.h.i.+ne Brighter than elsewhere. Now, look straight before, And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine, And from my soul, which fronts the future so, With unabashed and unabated gaze, Teach me to hope for, what the angels know When they smile clear as thou dost. Down G.o.d's ways With just alighted feet, between the snow And snowdrops, where a little lamb may graze, Thou hast no fear, my lamb, about the road, Albeit in our vain-glory we a.s.sume That, less than we have, thou hast learnt of G.o.d.

Stand out, my blue-eyed prophet!--thou, to whom The earliest world-day light that ever flowed, Through Casa Guidi Windows chanced to come!

Now shake the glittering nimbus of thy hair, And be G.o.d's witness that the elemental New springs of life are gus.h.i.+ng everywhere To cleanse the watercourses, and prevent all Concrete obstructions which infest the air!

That earth's alive, and gentle or ungentle Motions within her, signify but growth!-- The ground swells greenest o'er the labouring moles.

Howe'er the uneasy world is vexed and wroth, Young children, lifted high on parent souls, Look round them with a smile upon the mouth, And take for music every bell that tolls; (WHO said we should be better if like these?) But _we_ sit murmuring for the future though Posterity is smiling on our knees, Convicting us of folly. Let us go-- We will trust G.o.d. The blank interstices Men take for ruins, He will build into With pillared marbles rare, or knit across With generous arches, till the fane's complete.

This world has no perdition, if some loss.

Such cheer I gather from thy smiling, Sweet!

The self-same cherub-faces which emboss The Vail, lean inward to the Mercy-seat.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] See the opening pa.s.sage of the "Agamemnon" of aeschylus.

[13] Philostratus relates of Apollonius how he objected to the musical instrument of Linus the Rhodian that it could not enrich or beautify. The history of music in our day would satisfy the philosopher on one point at least.

POEMS BEFORE CONGRESS

PREFACE.

These poems were written under the pressure of the events they indicate, after a residence in Italy of so many years that the present triumph of great principles is heightened to the writer's feelings by the disastrous issue of the last movement, witnessed from "Casa Guidi Windows" in 1849. Yet, if the verses should appear to English readers too pungently rendered to admit of a patriotic respect to the English sense of things, I will not excuse myself on such grounds, nor on the ground of my attachment to the Italian people and my admiration of their heroic constancy and union. What I have written has simply been written because I love truth and justice _quand meme_,--"more than Plato" and Plato's country, more than Dante and Dante's country, more even than Shakespeare and Shakespeare's country.

And if patriotism means the flattery of one's nation in every case, then the patriot, take it as you please, is merely the courtier which I am not, though I have written "Napoleon III. in Italy." It is time to limit the significance of certain terms, or to enlarge the significance of certain things. Nationality is excellent in its place; and the instinct of self-love is the root of a man, which will develop into sacrificial virtues. But all the virtues are means and uses; and, if we hinder their tendency to growth and expansion, we both destroy them as virtues, and degrade them to that rankest species of corruption reserved for the most n.o.ble organizations. For instance,--non-intervention in the affairs of neighbouring states is a high political virtue; but non-intervention does not mean, pa.s.sing by on the other side when your neighbour falls among thieves,--or Phariseeism would recover it from Christianity. Freedom itself is virtue, as well as privilege; but freedom of the seas does not mean piracy, nor freedom of the land, brigandage; nor freedom of the senate, freedom to cudgel a dissident member; nor freedom of the press, freedom to calumniate and lie. So, if patriotism be a virtue indeed, it cannot mean an exclusive devotion to our country's interests,--for that is only another form of devotion to personal interests, family interests, or provincial interests, all of which, if not driven past themselves, are vulgar and immoral objects. Let us put away the Little Peddlingtonism unworthy of a great nation, and too prevalent among us. If the man who does not look beyond this natural life is of a somewhat narrow order, what must be the man who does not look beyond his own frontier or his own sea?

I confess that I dream of the day when an English statesman shall arise with a heart too large for England; having courage in the face of his countrymen to a.s.sert of some suggested policy,--"This is good for your trade; this is necessary for your domination: but it will vex a people hard by; it will hurt a people farther off; it will profit nothing to the general humanity: therefore, away with it!--it is not for you or for me." When a British minister dares speak so, and when a British public applauds him speaking, then shall the nation be glorious, and her praise, instead of exploding from within, from loud civic mouths, come to her from without, as all worthy praise must, from the alliances she has fostered and the populations she has saved.