PERKINS LIBRARY 
 
 Dulce University 
 Kare Dooks 
 
 
 
 
 
^ / £--- 
 
 
 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 & $oem. 
 
 BY 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 
 
 LONDON : 
 CHAPMAN & HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 
 
 1851. 
 
LONDON' 
 IBADBURI AMi EVANS. PKINTEK8, WUITEPH1AH1 
 
E 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 This Poem contains the impressions of the writer 
 upon events in Tuscany of winch she was a witness. 
 " Prom a window/'' the critic may demur. She bows 
 to the objection in the very title of her work. No 
 continuous narrative, nor exposition of political philo- 
 sophy, is attempted by her. It is a simple story of 
 personal impressions, whose only value is in the 
 intensity with which they were received, as proving 
 her warm affection for a beautiful and unfortunate 
 country; and the sincerity with which they are 
 
VI ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 related, as indicating her own good faith and freedom 
 from all partisanship. 
 
 Of the two parts of this Poem, the first was 
 written nearly three years ago, while the second re- 
 sumes the actual situation of 1851. The discrepancy 
 between the two parts is a sufficient guarantee to 
 the public of the truthfulness of the writer, who, 
 though she certainly escaped the epidemic "falling 
 sickness" of enthusiasm for Pio Nono, takes shame 
 upon herself that she believed, like a woman, some 
 royal oaths, and lost sight of the probable conse- 
 quences of some obvious popular defects. If the 
 discrepancy should be painful to the reader, let him 
 understand that to the writer it has been more so. 
 But such discrepancy we are called upon to accept at 
 every hour by the conditions of our nature . . . the 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. Vll 
 
 discrepancy between aspiration and performance, 
 between faith and dis-illusion, between hope and fact. 
 
 " trusted, broken prophecy, 
 richest fortune sourly crost, 
 Born for the future, to the future lost ! " 
 
 Nay, not lost to the future in this case. The future 
 of Italy shall not be disinherited. 
 
 Florence, 1851. 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 PART I. 
 i. 
 
 I heard last night a little child go singing 
 
 'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church, 
 " bella liberta, lella ! " stringing 
 
 The same words still on notes he went in search 
 So high for, you concluded the upspringing 
 
 Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch 
 Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green ; 
 
 And that the heart of Italy must beat, 
 
2 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 While such a voice had leave to rise serene 
 'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street !- 
 
 A little child, too, who not long had been 
 By mother's ringer steadied on his feet ; 
 
 And still hella liberta he sang. 
 
 Then I thought, musing, of the innumerous 
 
 Sweet songs which for this Italy outrang 
 From older singers' lips, who sang not thus 
 
 Exultingly and purely, yet, with pang 
 Sheathed into music, touched the heart of us 
 
 So finely that the pity scarcely pained ! 
 I thought how Filicaja led on others, 
 
 Bewailers for their Italy enchained, 
 And how they called her childless among mothers, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. [ 
 
 Widow of empires, ay, and scarce refrained 
 Cursing her beauty to her face, as brothers 
 
 Might a shamed sister, — " Had she been less fair 
 She were less wretched," — how, evoking so 
 
 From congregated wrong and heaped despair 
 Of men and women writhing under blow, 
 
 Harrowed and hideous in their filthy lair, 
 A personating Image, wherein woe 
 
 Was wrapt in beauty from offending much, 
 They called it Cybele, or Niobe, 
 
 Or laid it corpse-like on a bier for such, 
 Where the whole world might drop for Italy 
 
 Those cadenced tears which burn not where they 
 touch, — 
 " Juliet of nations, canst thou die as we ? 
 
 And was the violet crown that crowned thy head 
 
 B 2 
 
4 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 So over large, though new buds made it rough, 
 
 It slipped down and across thine eyelids dead, 
 sweet, fair Juliet ? " — Of such songs enough ; 
 
 Too many of such complaints ! Behold, instead, 
 Void at Yerona, Juliet's marble trough ! 
 
 And void as that is, are all images 
 Men set between themselves and actual wrong, 
 
 To catch the weight of pity, meet the stress 
 Of conscience ; though 'tis easier to gaze long 
 
 On personations, masks, and effigies, 
 Than to see live weak creatures crushed by strong. 
 
 For me who stand in Italy to-day, 
 Where worthier poets stood and sang before, 
 I kiss their footsteps, yet their words gainsay 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 I can but muse in hope npon tins shore 
 
 Of golden Arno, as it shoots away 
 Straight through the heart of Florence, 'neath the four 
 
 Bent bridges, seeming to strain off like bows, 
 And tremble, while the arrowy nndertide 
 
 Shoots on and cleaves the marble as it goes, 
 And strikes up palace-walls on either side, 
 
 And froths the cornice out in glittering rows, 
 With doors and windows quaintly multiplied, 
 
 And terrace-sweeps, and gazers upon all, 
 By whom if flower or kerchief were thrown out, 
 
 From any lattice there, the same would fall 
 Into the river underneath, no doubt, — 
 
 It runs so close and fast 'twixt wall and wall. 
 How beautiful ! The mountains from without 
 
 Listen in silence for the word said next, 
 
6 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 (What word will men say ?) here where Giotto planted 
 
 His campanile, like an unperplexed 
 Question to Heaven, concerning the things granted 
 
 To a great people, who, being greatly vexed 
 In act, in aspiration keep undaunted ! 
 
 (What word says God?) The sculptor's Night and 
 Day, 
 And Dawn and Twilight, wait in marble scorn, 
 
 Like dogs couched on a dunghill, on the clay 
 From whence the Medicean stamp 's outworn, — 
 
 The final putting off of all such sway 
 By all such hands, and freeing of the unborn 
 
 In Florence, and the world outside his Florence. 
 That 's Michel Angelo ! his statues wait 
 
 In the small chapel of the dim St. Lawrence ! 
 Day's eyes are breaking bold and passionate 
 

 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Over his shoulder, and will flash abhorrence 
 On darkness, and with level looks meet fate, 
 
 When once loose from that marble film of theirs : 
 The Night has wild dreams in her sleep ; the Dawn 
 
 Is haggard as the sleepless : Twilight wears 
 A sort of horror : as the veil withdrawn 
 
 Twixt the artist's soul and works had left them 
 heirs 
 Of the deep thoughts which would not quail nor fawn, 
 
 His angers and contempts, his hope and love ; 
 For not without a meaning did he place 
 
 Princely Urbino on the seat above 
 "With everlasting shadow on Ins face ; 
 
 "While the slow dawns and twilights disapprove 
 The ashes of his long-extinguished race, 
 
 Which never shall clog more the feet of men. 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 I do believe, divinest Angelo, 
 
 That winter-hour, in Yia Larga, when 
 Thou wert commanded to build up in snow 
 
 Some marvel of thine art, which straight again 
 Dissolved beneath the sun's Italian glow, 
 
 While thine eyes, still broad with the plastic 
 passion, 
 Thawed, too, in drops of wounded manhood, . . since, 
 
 Mocking alike thine art and indignation, 
 Laughed at the palace-window the new prince, . . 
 
 " Aha ! this genius needs for exaltation, 
 When all 's said, and however the proud may wince, 
 
 A little marble from our princely mines ! " 
 I do believe that hour thou laughedst too, 
 
CASA GUTDI WINDOWS. 
 
 For the whole world and for thy Florentines, 
 After those few tears — which were only few ! 
 
 That as, beneath the sun, the grand white lines 
 Of thy snow-statue trembled and withdrew, — 
 
 The head, erect as Jove's, being palsied first, 
 The eyelids flattened, the full brow turned blank, — 
 
 When the right hand, upraised as if it cursed, 
 Dropped, a mere snowball, and the people sank 
 
 Their voices, though a louder laughter burst 
 From the window, — Michel, then, thy soul could thank 
 
 God and the prince, for promise and presage, 
 And laugh the laugh back, I think, verily, 
 
 Thine eyes being purged by tears of righteous rage, 
 
 To read a wrong into a prophecy, 
 
 And measure a true great man's heritage 
 Against a mere Grand-duke's posterity. 
 
10 CASA GULDI WINDOWS. 
 
 I think thy soul said then, " I do not need 
 A princedom and its quarries, after all ; 
 
 For if I write, paint, carve a word, indeed, 
 On book or board or dust, on floor or wall, 
 
 The same is kept of God who taketh heed 
 That not a letter of the meaning fall, 
 
 Or ere it touch and teach His world's deep heart, 
 Outlasting, therefore, all your lordships, Sir ! 
 
 So keep your stone, beseech you, for your part, 
 To cover up your grave-place and refer 
 
 The proper titles ! / live by my art ! 
 The thought I threw into tins snow shall stir 
 
 This gazing people when their gaze is done ; 
 And the tradition of your act and mine, 
 
 When all the snow is melted in the sun, 
 Shall gather up, for unborn men, a sign 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 11 
 
 Of what is the true princedom ! ay, and none 
 Shall laugh that day, except the drunk with wine." 
 
 Amen, great Angelo ! the day is come ; 
 And, if we laugh not on it, shall we weep ? 
 
 Much more we shall not. Through the mournful hum 
 Of poets sonneteering in their sleep 
 
 ''Neath the pale olives, which droop, tickling some 
 On chin and forehead from a dream too deep, — 
 
 Through all that drowsy hum of voices smooth, 
 The hopeful bird mounts carolling from brake ; 
 
 The hopeful child, with leaps to catch his growth, 
 Sings open-eyed for liberty's sweet sake ; 
 
 And I, who am a singer too, forsooth, 
 Prefer to sing with these who are awake, 
 
12 CAS A GTJID1 WINDOWS. 
 
 With birds, with babes, with men who will not fear 
 The baptism of the holy morning dew, 
 
 (And many of snch wakers now are here, 
 Complete in their anointed manhood, who 
 
 Will greatly dare and greatlier persevere !) 
 Than join those old thin voices with my new, 
 
 And sigh for Italy with some safe sigh 
 Cooped np in mnsic 'twixt an oh and ah, — 
 
 Nay, hand in hand with, that young child, will I 
 Kather go singing "Bella liberth" 
 
 Than, with those poets, croon the dead or cry 
 " Se tu men bellafossi, Italia ! " 
 
 " Less wretched if less fair/' perhaps a truth 
 Is so far plain in this — that Italy, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 13 
 
 Long trammelled with the purple of her youth 
 Against her age's due activity, 
 
 Sate still upon her graves, without the ruth 
 Of death, but also without energy 
 
 And hope of life. " What 's Italy ? " men ask : 
 And others answer, "Virgil, Cicero, 
 
 Catullus, Caesar/' And what more ? to task 
 The memory closer — " Why, Boccaccio, 
 
 Dante, Petrarca," — and if still the flask 
 Appears to yield its wine by drops too slow, — 
 
 " Angelo, Baffael, Pergolese," — all 
 Whose strong hearts beat through stone, or charged, 
 again, 
 
 Cloth-threads with fire of souls electrical, 
 Or broke up heaven for music. What more 
 then? 
 
/ 
 
 14 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Why, then, no more. The chaplefs last beads fall 
 In naming the last saintship within ken, 
 
 And, after that, none prayeth in the land. 
 Alas, this Italy has too long swept 
 
 Heroic ashes up for hour-glass sand ; 
 Of her own past, impassioned nympholept ! 
 
 Consenting to be nailed by the hand 
 To the same bay-tree under which she stepped 
 
 A queen of old, and plucked a leafy branch ; 
 And licensing the world too long, indeed, 
 
 To use her broad phylacteries to staunch 
 And stop her bloody lips, which took no heed 
 
 How one quick breath would draw an avalanche 
 Of living sons around her, to succeed 
 
 The vanished generations. Could she count 
 Those oil-eaters, with large, live, mobile mouths 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 15 
 
 Agape for maccaroni, in the amount 
 Of consecrated heroes of her south's 
 
 Bright rosary ? The pitcher at the fount, 
 The gift of gods, being broken, — why, one loathes 
 
 To let the ground-leaves of the place confer 
 A natural bowl. And thus, she chose to seem 
 
 No nation, but the poet's pensioner, 
 With alms from every land of song and dream ; 
 
 While her own pipers sweetly piped of her, 
 Until their proper breaths, in that extreme 
 
 Of sighing, split the reed on which they played ! 
 Of which, no more : but never say " no more " 
 
 To Italy ! Her memories undismayed 
 Say rather " evermore " — her graves implore 
 
 Her future to be strong and not afraid — 
 Her verv statues send their looks before ! 
 
16 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 We do not serve the dead — the past is past ! 
 God lives, and lifts his glorious mornings up 
 
 Before the eyes of men, who wake at last, 
 And put away the meats they used to sup, 
 
 And on the dry dust of the ground outcast 
 The dregs remaining of the ancient cup, 
 
 And turn to wakeful prayer and worthy act. 
 The dead, upon their awful 'vantage ground, — 
 
 The sun not in their faces, — shall abstract 
 No more our strength : we will not be discrowned 
 
 Through treasuring their crowns, nor deign transact 
 A barter of the present, in a sound, 
 
 For what was counted good in foregone days. 
 Dead, ye shall no longer cling to us 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 17 
 
 With your stiff hands of desiccating praise, 
 And hold us backward by the garment thus, 
 
 To stay and laud you in long virelays ! 
 Still, no ! we will not be oblivious 
 
 Of our own lives, because ye lived before, 
 Nor of our acts, because ye acted well, — 
 
 We thank you that ye first unlatched the door — 
 We will not make it inaccessible 
 
 By thankings in the doorway any more, 
 But will go onward to extinguish hell 
 
 With our fresh souls, our younger hope, and God's 
 Maturity of purpose. Soon shall we 
 
 Be the dead too ! and, that our periods 
 Of life may round themselves to memory, 
 
 As smoothly as on our graves the funeral-sods, 
 We must look to it to excel as ye, 
 
-' 
 
 18 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 And bear our age as far, unlimited 
 
 By the last sea-mark ! so, to be invoked 
 
 By future generations, as the Dead. 
 
 'Tis true that when the dust of death has choked 
 
 A great man's voice, the common words he said 
 Turn oracles, — the meanings which he yoked 
 
 Like horses, draw like griffins ! — this is true 
 And acceptable. Also I desire, 
 
 When men make record, with the flowers they strew, 
 " Savonarola's soul went out in fire 
 
 Upon our Grand-duke's piazza, and burned through 
 A moment first, or ere he did expire, 
 
 The veil betwixt the right and wrong, and showed 
 How near God sate and judged the judges there, — " 
 

 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 19 
 
 Desire, upon the pavement overstrewed, 
 To cast my violets witli as reverent care, 
 
 And prove that all the winters winch have snowed 
 Cannot snow out the scent, from stones and air, 
 
 Of a sincere man's virtues. This was he, 
 Savonarola, who, while Peter sank 
 
 With his whole boat-load, called courageously 
 ' Wake Christ, wake Christ ! " — who, having tried the 
 tank 
 
 Of the church-waters used for baptistry 
 Ere Luther lived to spill them, said they stank ! 
 
 Who also, by a princely deathbed, cried 
 " Loose Florence, or God will not loose thy soul," 
 
 While the Magnificent fell back and died 
 Beneath the star-looks, shooting from the cowl, 
 
 Winch turned to wormwood bitterness the wide 
 
 c2 
 
20 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Deep sea of his ambitions. It were foul 
 
 To grudge Savonarola and the rest 
 Their violets ! rather pay them quick and fresh ! 
 
 The emphasis of death makes manifest 
 The eloquence of action in our flesh ; 
 
 And men who, riving, were but dimly guessed, 
 When once free from their life's entangled mesh, 
 
 Show their full length in graves, or even indeed 
 Exaggerate their stature, in the flat, 
 
 To noble admirations which exceed 
 Nobly, nor sin in such excess. For that 
 
 Is wise and righteous. We, who are the seed 
 Of buried creatures, if we turned and spate 
 
 Upon our antecedents, we were vile. 
 Bring violets rather ! If these had not walked 
 
 Their furlong, could we hope to walk our mile ? 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 21 
 
 Therefore bring violets ! Yet if we, self-baulked, 
 
 Stand still a-strewing violets all the while, 
 These had as well not moved, ourselves not talked 
 
 Of these. So rise up with a cheerful smile, 
 And, having strewn the violets, reap the corn, 
 
 And, having reaped and garnered, bring the 
 plough 
 And draw new furrows 'neath the healthy morn, 
 
 And plant the great Hereafter in this Now. 
 
 Of old 'twas so. How step by step was worn, 
 As each man gained on each, securely ! — how 
 
 Each by his own strength sought his own ideal, 
 The ultimate Perfection leaning bright 
 
 From out the sun and stars, to bless the leal 
 
22 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 And earnest search of all for Pair and Right, 
 Through the dim forms, by earth accounted real ! 
 
 Because old Jubal blew into delight 
 The souls of men, with clear-piped melodies, 
 
 What if young Asaph were content at most 
 To draw from JubaFs grave, with listening eyes, 
 
 Traditionary music's floating ghost 
 Into the grass-grown silence ? were it wise ? 
 
 Is it not wiser, JubaTs breath being lost, 
 That Miriam clashed her cymbals to surprise 
 
 The sun between her white arms flung apart, 
 With new, glad, golden sounds ? that David's 
 strings 
 
 Overflowed his hand with music from his heart ? 
 So harmony grows full from many springs, 
 
 And happy accident turns holy art. 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 23 
 
 Or enter, in your Florence wanderings, 
 
 Santa Maria Novella church. You pass 
 The left stair, where, at plague-time, Macchiavel 
 
 Saw one with set fair face as in a glass, 
 Dressed out against the fear of death and hell, 
 
 Bustling her silks in pauses of the mass, 
 To keep the thought off how her husband fell, 
 
 When she left home, stark dead across her feet — 
 The stair leads up to what Orgagna gave 
 
 Of Dante's daemons ; but you, passing it, 
 Ascend the right stair of the farther nave, 
 
 To muse in a small chapel scarcely lit 
 By Cimabue's Yirgin. Bright and brave, 
 
 That picture was accounted, mark, of old ! 
 
24 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 A king stood bare before its sovran grace ; 
 
 A reverent people shouted to behold 
 The picture, not the king; and even the place 
 
 Containing such a miracle, grew bold, 
 Named the Glad Borgo from that beauteous face, 
 Which thrilled the artist, after work, to think 
 That his ideal Mary-smile should stand 
 
 So very near him ! — he, within the brink 
 Of all that glory, let in by his hand 
 
 With too divine a rashness ! Yet none shrink 
 Who gaze here now — albeit the thing is planned 
 
 Sublimely in the thought's simplicity. 
 The Virgin, throned in empyreal state, 
 
 Minds only the young babe upon her knee ; 
 While, each side, angels bear the royal weight, 
 Prostrated meekly, smiling tenderly 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 25 
 
 Oblivion of their wings ! the Child thereat 
 
 Stretches its hand like God. If any should, 
 Because of some stiff draperies and loose joints, 
 
 Gaze scorn down from the heights of Raffaelhood, 
 On Cimabue's picture, — Heaven anoints 
 
 The head of no such critic, and his blood 
 The poet's curse strikes full on, and appoints 
 
 To ague and cold spasms for evermore. 
 A noble picture ! worthy of the shout 
 
 "Wherewith along the streets the people bore. 
 Its cherub faces, which the sun threw out 
 
 Until they stooped and entered the church door ! — 
 Yet rightly was young Giotto talked about, 
 
 Whom Cimabue found among the sheep, 
 And knew, as gods know gods, and carried home 
 
 To paint the things he painted, with a deep 
 
26 CAS A GTJIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 And fuller insight, and so overcome 
 
 His chapel- Virgin with a heavenlier sweep 
 Of light. For thus we mount into the sum 
 
 Of great things known or acted. I hold, too, 
 That Cimabue smiled upon the lad, 
 
 At the first stroke which passed what he could do, — 
 Or else his Virgin's smile had never had 
 
 Such sweetness in 't. All great men who foreknew 
 Their heirs in art, for art's sake have been glad, 
 
 And bent their old white heads as if uncrowned, 
 Fanatics of their pure ideals still, 
 
 Far more than of their laurels which were found 
 With some less stalwart struggle of the will. 
 
 If old Margheritone trembled, swooned, 
 And died despairing at the open sill 
 
 Of other men's achievements, (who achieved, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 27 
 
 By loving art beyond the master !) he 
 
 Was old Margheritone and conceived 
 Never, at youngest and most ecstasy, 
 
 A Virgin like that dream of one, which heaved 
 The death-sigh from his heart. If wistfully 
 
 Margheritone sickened at the smell 
 Of Cimabue's laurel, let him go ! — • 
 
 Strong Cimabue stood up very well 
 In spite of Giotto's — and AngeHco, 
 
 The artist-saint, kept smiling in his cell 
 The smile with which he welcomed the sweet slow 
 
 Inbreak of angels, (whitening through the dim 
 That he might paint them !) while the sudden sense 
 
 Of Raffael's future was revealed to him 
 By force of his own fair works' competence. 
 
 The same blue waters where the dolphins swim 
 
28 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Suggest the Tritons. Through the blue Immense, 
 
 Strike out all swimmers ! cling not in the way 
 Of one another, so to sink ; but learn 
 
 The strong man's impulse, catch the freshening 
 spray- 
 He throws up in his motions, and discern 
 
 By his clear, westering eye, the time of day. 
 God, thou hast set us worthy gifts to earn, 
 
 Beside thy heaven and Thee ! and when I say 
 "Tis worth while for the weakest man alive 
 
 To live and die, — there 's room too, I repeat, 
 Tor all the strongest to live well, and strive 
 
 Their own way, by their individual heat, 
 Like a new bee-swarm leaving the old hive 
 
 Despite the wax which tempteth violet-sweet. 
 So let the living live, the dead retain 
 
CASA GTJIDI WINDOWS. 29 
 
 Mowers on cold graves ! — though honour 's best 
 supplied, 
 When we bring actions, to prove their' s not vain. 
 
 Cold graves, we say ? it shall be testified 
 That living men who throb in heart and train, 
 
 Without the dead, were colder. If we tried 
 To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure 
 
 The future would not stand. Precipitate 
 This old roof from the shrine — and, insecure, 
 
 The nesting swallows fly off, mate from mate. 
 Scant were the gardens, if the graves were fewer ! 
 
 And the green poplars grew no longer straight, 
 Whose tops not looked to Troy. Why, who would fight 
 
 For Athens, and not swear by Marathon ? 
 
30 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Who would build temples, without tombs in sight ? 
 
 Who live, without some dead man's benison ? 
 Who seek truth, hope for good, or 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 rhythms will need 
 The 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 ? Who denies 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. 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 31 
 
 XII. 
 
 I would but turn these lachrymals to use, 
 Fill them with fresh oil from the olive grove, 
 
 To feed the new lamp fuller. 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 
 
32 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 And piazzas with a tumult and desire. 
 The people, with accumulated heats, 
 
 And faces turned one way, as if one fire 
 Did draw and flush them, leaving their old beats, 
 
 Went upward to 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 cruel fit, — 
 The first pulse of an even flow of blood, 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 33 
 
 To prove the level of Italian veins 
 Toward rights perceived and granted. How we gazed 
 
 Prom 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 magistrates, with their 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 to grow 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. 
 
34 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 The priesthood passed : the friars, with worldly-wise 
 Keen, sidelong glances from their beards, about 
 
 The street, to see who shouted ! man) 7 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 populace, with flag and rights as good ; 
 And very loud the shout was for that same 
 
 Motto, " II popolo," II Popolo, — 
 The word meant dukedom, empire, majesty, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 35 
 
 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 to some parliament 
 Of lovers of her Italy, in ranks, 
 
 Each bearing its land's symbols reverent ; 
 At which the stones seemed breaking into thanks 
 
 d2 
 
36 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 And rattling up to 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 ; and some laughed aloud, 
 And none asked any why they laughed and wept : 
 
 Friends kissed each other's cheeks, and foes long 
 vowed 
 Did it more warmly ; two-months' babies leapt 
 
 Eight upward in their mother's arms, whose black, 
 Wide, glittering eyes looked elsewhere \ lovers pressed 
 
 Each before either, neither glancing back ; 
 

 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 37 
 
 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 with their shoes 
 Still on the stones, and smiled as if they saw. 
 
 O Heaven ! I think that day had noble use 
 Among God's days. So near stood Eight and Law, 
 
 Both mutually forborne ! Law would not bruise, 
 Nor Eight deny ; and each in reverent awe 
 
 Honoured the other. What if, nevertheless, 
 The sun did, that day, leave upon the vines 
 
 No charta, and the liberal Duke's excess 
 Did scarce exceed a Guelf s or Ghibelline's 
 
 In the specific actual righteousness 
 Of what that day he granted ;* still the signs 
 
 * Since when the constitutional concessions have been complete in Tuscany, 
 as all the world knows. The event breaks in upon the meditation, and is too 
 fast for prophecy in these strange times.— E. B. B. 
 
38 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Are good, and full of promise, we must say, 
 When multitudes thank kings for granting prayers, 
 
 And kings concede their people/ s right to 
 pray, 
 Both in the sunshine ! Griefs are not despairs, 
 
 So uttered ; nor can royal claims disma}*, 
 When men, from humble homes and ducal chairs, 
 
 Hate wrong together. It was well to view 
 Those banners ruffled in a Grand-duke'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, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 39 
 
 Sware that his eyes filled up, and overfilled 
 
 With good warm human tears, which unre- 
 pressed 
 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 ! 
 Methinks God loves it better than repose. 
 
40 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 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 
 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 41 
 
 An inspiration in the place beside, 
 
 From that dim bust of Brutus, jagged and grand, 
 Where Buonarotti passionately tried 
 
 Out of the 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 ? 
 
 Not there ! the people chose still holier ground ! 
 The people, who are simple, blind, and rough, 
 
 Know their own angels, after looking round. 
 What chose they then ? where met they ? 
 
 XV. 
 
 On the stone 
 CalTd Dante's, — a plain flat stone, scarce discerned 
 
42 CAS A GULDI WINDOWS. 
 
 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. 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 the passers 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 Ravenna's byeway, might 
 
 Thy buried bones be thrilled to ecstasy, 
 Could' st know thy favourite stone's elected right 
 
 As tryst-place for thy Tuscans to foresee 
 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 43 
 
 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 from the stars in fuller cure, 
 Than when, in Santa Croce church, forlorn 
 
 Of any corpse, the architect and hewer 
 Did pile the empty marbles as thy tomb ! 
 
 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 
 Their way to, through Time's ordures stratified, 
 
 And startle broad awake into the dull 
 Bargello chamber. Now, thou 'rt milder eyed, 
 
 And Beatrix may leap up glad to cull 
 
44 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Thy first smile, even in heaven and at her side, 
 
 Like that which, nine years old, looked beau- 
 tiful 
 At Tuscan May-game. Foolish words ! I meant 
 
 Only that Dante loved his Florence well, 
 And Florence, now, to love him is content ! 
 
 I mean too, certes, that the sweetest smell 
 Of love's dear incense, by the living sent 
 
 To find the dead, is not accessible 
 To your low 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. 
 

 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 45 
 
 For Dante sits in heaven, and ye stand here, 
 
 And more remains for doing, all must feel, 
 Than trysting on Ins stone from year to year 
 
 To shift processions, civic heel 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 
 
46 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Will to be noble ! Austrian Mettemich 
 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 dew-laps 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 
 
CASA GU1DI WINDOWS. 47 
 
 The brutal with the brutal, and, amid 
 
 This ripening world, suggest a lion- hunt 
 And lion-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 
 AVell as the onslaught, how to stand aloof ! 
 
 Or else the world gets past the mere brute blow 
 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 
 
48 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Christ's stature nearer. Not that we, alas ! 
 
 Attain already ; but a single inch 
 Will help to look down on the swordsman's pass, 
 
 As Roland on a coward who could 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 
 
 
 

 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 49 
 
 The " glorious arms n 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, 
 And send abroad thy high hopes, and thy higher 
 
 Eesolves, 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. my England, crease 
 Thy purple with no alien agonies 
 
.30 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Which reach thee through the net of war ! No 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 ever he looked of old, when he began 
 To sing that ' ' Achillean wrath which slew 
 
 So many heroes/' — seeing he shall treat 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 51 
 
 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, winch 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 
 
 E 2 
 
52 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 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 organised 
 
 In some high soul, crowned capable to lead 
 The conscious people, — conscious and advised, — 
 
 For if we lift a people like mere clay, 
 It falls the same. "We want thee, unfound 
 
 And sovran teacher ! — if thy beard be grey 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 53 
 
 Or black, we bid thee rise up from the ground 
 
 And speak the word God giveth thee to say, 
 Inspiring into all this people round, 
 
 Instead of passion, thought, which pioneers 
 All generous passion, purifies from sin, 
 
 And strikes the hour for. Eise thou teacher ! here's 
 A crowd to make a nation ! — best begin 
 
 By making each a man, till all be peers 
 Of earth's true patriots and pure martyrs in 
 
 Knowing and daring. Best unbar the doors 
 Which Peter's heirs keep locked so overdose 
 
 They only let the mice across the floors, 
 While every churchman dangles as he goes 
 
 The great key at his girdle, and abhors 
 In Christ's name, meekly. Open wide the house — 
 
 Concede the entrance with Christ's liberal mind, 
 
54 CASA GULDI WINDOWS. 
 
 And set the tables with His wine and bread. 
 
 What ! commune in " both kinds ? " In every kind — 
 Wine, wafer, love, hope, truth, unlimited, 
 
 Nothing kept back. Tor, when a man is blind 
 To starlight, will he see the rose is red ? 
 
 A bondsman shivering at a Jesuit's foot — 
 " Yae ! mea culpa \" is not like to stand 
 
 A freedman at a despot's, and dispute 
 His titles by the balance in his hand, 
 
 Weighing them " suo jure." Tend the root, 
 If careful of the branches ; and expand 
 
 The inner souls of men, before you strive 
 For civic heroes. 
 
 But the teacher, where ? 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 From all these crowded faces, all alive, — 
 Eyes, of their own lids flashing themselves bare, — 
 
 And brows that with a mobile life contrive 
 A deeper shadow, — may we no wise dare 
 
 To point a finger out, and touch a man, 
 And cry "this is the leader." What, all these ! — 
 
 Broad heads, black eyes, — yet not a soul that ran 
 From God down with a message ? All, to please 
 
 The donna waving measures with her fan, 
 And not the judgment-angel on Ins knees — 
 
 The trumpet just an inch off from his lips — 
 Who when he breathes next, will put out the sun ? 
 
 Yet mankind's self were foundered in eclipse, 
 If lacking, with a great work to be done, 
 
 A doer. No, the earth already dips 
 Back into light — a better day 's begun — 
 
56 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 And soon this doer, teacher, will stand plain, 
 And build the golden pipes and synthesize 
 
 Tins people-organ for a holy strain : 
 And we who hope thus, still in all these eyes, 
 
 Go sounding for the deep look which shall drain 
 Suffused thought into channelled enterprise ! 
 
 Where is the teacher ? What now may he do, 
 Who shall do greatly ? Doth he gird his waist 
 
 With a monk's rope, like Luther ? or pursue 
 The goat, like Tell ? or dry his nets in haste, 
 
 Like Masaniello when the sky was blue ? 
 Keep house like any peasant, with inlaced, 
 
 Bare, brawny arms about his favourite child, 
 And meditative looks beyond the door. — 
 
 (But not to mark the kidling's teeth have filed 
 The green shoots of his vine which last year bore 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 57 
 
 Full twenty bunches ;) or, on triple-piled 
 Throne- velvets, shall we see him bless the poor, 
 
 Like any Pontiff, in the Poorest' s name, — 
 While the tiara holds itself aslope 
 
 Upon his steady brows, which, all the same, 
 Bend mildly to permit the people's hope ? 
 
 Whatever hand shall grasp this orinamme, 
 Whatever man (last peasant or first Pope 
 
 Seeking to free his country !) shall appear, 
 Teach, lead, strike fire into the masses, fill 
 
 These empty bladders with fine air, insphere 
 These mils into a unity of will, 
 
 And make of Italy a nation — dear 
 And blessed be that man ! the Heavens shall kill 
 
58 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 No leaf the earth shall grow for him j and Death 
 Shall cast him back upon the lap of Life, 
 
 To live more surely, in a clarion-breath 
 Of hero-music ! Brutus, with the knife, 
 
 Rienzi, with the fasces, throb beneath 
 Rome's stones ; and more, who threw away joy's fife 
 
 Like Pallas, that the beauty of their souls 
 Might ever shine untroubled and entire ! 
 
 But if it can be true that he who rolls 
 The Church's thunders will reserve her fire 
 
 For only light ; from eucharistic bowls 
 Will pour new life for nations that expire, 
 
 And rend the scarlet of his Papal vest 
 To gird the weak loins of his countrymen — 
 
 I hold that man surpasses all the rest 
 Of Romans, heroes, patriots, — and that when 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 59 
 
 He sat down on the throne, he dispossessed 
 The first graves of some glory. See again, 
 
 This country-saving is a glorious thing ! 
 Why, say a common man achieved it ? Well ! 
 
 Say, a rich man did ? Excellent ! A king ? 
 That grows sublime ! A priest ? Improbable ! 
 
 A Pope ? Ah, there we stop and cannot bring 
 Our faith up to the leap, with history's bell 
 
 So heavy round the neck of it — albeit 
 We fain would grant the possibility 
 
 For thy sake, Pio Nono ! 
 
 Stretch thy feet 
 In that case — I will kiss them reverently 
 As any pilgrim to the Papal seat ! 
 
60 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 And, such proved possible, thy throne to me 
 
 Shall seem as holy a place as Pellico's 
 Venetian dungeon ; or as Spielberg's grate, 
 
 Where the fair Lombard woman hung the 
 rose 
 Of her sweet soul, by its own dewy weight, 
 
 (Because her sun shone inside to the close !) 
 And pining so, died early, yet too late 
 
 Tor what she suffered ! Yea, I will not choose 
 Betwixt thy throne, Pope Pius, and the spot 
 
 Marked red for ever spite of rains and dews, 
 Where two fell riddled by the Austrian's shot — 
 
 The brothers Bandiera, who accuse, 
 AVith one same mother-voice and face (that what 
 
 They speak may be invincible), the sins 
 Of earth's tormentors before God, the just, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 61 
 
 Until the unconscious thunder-bolt begins 
 To loosen in His grasp. 
 
 And yet we must 
 
 Beware, and mark the natural kiths and kins 
 Of circumstance and office, and distrust 
 
 A rich man reasoning in a poor man's hut 
 A poet who neglects pure truth to prove 
 
 Statistic fact ; a child who leaves a rut 
 Tor the smooth road; a priest who vows his 
 glove 
 
 Exhales no grace ; a prince who walks a-foot ; 
 A woman who has sworn she will not love ; 
 
 Ninth Pius sitting in Seventh Gregory's chair, 
 With Andrea Doria's forehead ! 
 
62 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Count what goes 
 
 To making up a Pope, before he wear 
 That triple crown. We pass the world-wide throes 
 
 Which went to make the Popedom, — the despair 
 Of free men, good men, wise men ; the dread shows 
 
 Of women's faces, by the faggot's flash, 
 Tossed out, to the minutest stir and throb 
 
 Of the white lips, least tremble of a lash, 
 To glut the red stare of the licensed mob ! 
 
 The short mad cries down oubliettes, — the plash 
 So horribly far off ! priests, trained to rob ; 
 
 And kings that, like encouraged nightmares, sate 
 On nations' hearts most heavily distressed 
 
 With monstrous sights and apophthegms Of fate. 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. (J3 
 
 We pass these things, — because " the times " are prest 
 
 With necessary charges of the weight 
 Of all the sin; and u Calvin, for the rest, 
 
 Made bold to burn Servetus — Ah, men err ! " — 
 And, so do Churches ! which is all we mean 
 
 To bring to proof in any register 
 Of theological fat kine and lean — 
 
 So drive them back into the pens ! refer 
 Old sins with long beards, and " I wis and ween," 
 
 Entirely to the times — the times — the times ! 
 Nor ever ask why this preponderant, 
 
 Infallible, pure Church could set her chimes 
 Most loudly then, just then ; most jubilant, 
 
 Precisely then — when mankind stood in crimes 
 Full heart-deep, and Heaven's judgments were not 
 scant. 
 
64 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Inquire still less, what signifies a Church 
 Of perfect inspiration and pure laws, 
 
 Who burns the first man with a brimstone torch, 
 And grinds the second, bone by bone, because 
 
 The times, forsooth, are used to rack and scorch ! 
 What is a holy Church, unless she awes 
 
 The times down from their sins ? Did Christ select 
 Such amiable times, to come and teach 
 
 Love to, and mercy ? Why, the world were wrecked, 
 If every mere great man, who lives to reach 
 
 A little leaf of popular respect, 
 Attained not simply by some special breach 
 
 In his land's customs, — by some precedence 
 In thought and act — which, having proved him higher 
 
 Than his own times, proved too his competence 
 Of helping them to wonder and aspire. 
 
CASA GUID1 WINDOWS. 65 
 
 My words are guiltless of the bigot's sense ! 
 My soul has fire to mingle with the fire 
 
 Of all these souls, within or out of doors 
 Of Home's Church or another. I believe 
 
 In one priest, and one temple, with its floors 
 Of shining jasper, gloomed at morn and eve 
 
 By countless knees of earnest auditors ; 
 And crystal walls, too lucid to perceive, — 
 
 That none may take the measure of the place 
 And say, " so far the porphyry ; then, the flint — 
 
 To tins mark, mercy goes, and there, ends grace/' 
 While still the permeable crystals hint 
 
 At some white starry distance, bathed in space ! 
 I feel how nature's ice-crusts keep the dint 
 
66 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Of undersprings of silent Deity j 
 I hold the articulated gospels, which 
 
 Show Christ among us, crucified on tree ; 
 I love all who love truth, if poor or rich 
 
 In what they have won of truth possessively ! 
 No altars and no hands defiled with pitch 
 
 Shall scare me off, but I will pray and eat 
 With all these — taking leave to choose my ewers 
 
 And say at last, " Your visible Churches cheat 
 Their inward types ; and if a Church assures 
 
 Of standing without failure and defeat, 
 That Church both fails and lies ! u 
 
 To leave which lures 
 Of wider subject through past years, — behold, 
 

 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 We come back from the Popedom to the Pope, 
 
 To ponder what he must be, ere we are bold 
 For what he may be, with our heavy hope 
 
 To trust upon his soul. So, fold by fold, 
 Explore this mummy in the priestly cope 
 
 Transmitted through the darks of time, to catch 
 The man within the wrappage, and discern 
 
 How he, an honest man, upon the watch 
 Pull fifty years, for what a man may learn, 
 
 Contrived to get just there ; with what a snatch 
 Of old world oboli he had to earn 
 
 The passage through ; with what a drowsy sop 
 To drench the busy barkings of his brain ; 
 
 What ghosts of pale tradition, wreathed with hop 
 'Gainst wakeful thought, he had to entertain 
 
 Por heavenly visions ; and consent to stop 
 
 f2 
 
68 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 The clock at noon, and let the honr remain 
 
 (Withont vain windings np) inviolate, 
 Against all chimings from the belfry. Lo ! 
 
 From every given pope, you must abate, 
 Albeit you love him, some things — good, you know 
 
 Which every given heretic you hate 
 Claims for his own, as being plainly so. 
 
 A pope must hold by popes a little, — yes, 
 By councils, — from Nicaea up to Trent, — 
 
 By hierocratic empire, more or less 
 Irresponsible to men, — he must resent 
 
 Each man's particular conscience, and repress 
 Inquiry, meditation, argument, 
 
 As tyrants faction. Also, he must not 
 Love truth too dangerously, but prefer 
 
 "The interests of the Church/' because a blot 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 69 
 
 Is better than a rent in miniver, — 
 
 Submit to see the people swallow hot 
 Husk-porridge which his chartered churchmen stir 
 
 Quoting the only true God's epigraph, 
 11 Feed my lambs, Peter ! " — must consent to sit 
 
 Attesting with his pastoral ring and staff, 
 To such a picture of our Lady, hit 
 
 Off well by artist angels, though not half 
 As fair as Giotto would have painted it ; 
 
 To such a vial, where a dead man's blood 
 Runs yearly warm beneath a churchman's finger j 
 
 To such a holy house of stone and wood, 
 Whereof a cloud of angels was the bringer 
 
 From Bethlehem to Loreto ! — Were it good 
 For any pope on earth to be a flinger 
 
 Of stones against these high-niched counterfeits ? 
 
70 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Apostates only are iconoclasts. 
 
 He dares not say, wlnle this false thing abets 
 That true thing, " this is false ! " he keepeth fasts 
 
 And prayers, as prayers and fasts were silver frets 
 To change a note upon a string that lasts, 
 
 And make a lie a virtue. Now, if he 
 Did more than this, — higher hoped and braver dared,- 
 
 I think he were a pope in jeopardy, 
 Or no pope rather ! for Ins soul had barred 
 
 The vaulting of his life. And certainly, 
 If he do only this, mankind's regard 
 
 Moves on from him at once, to seek some new 
 Teacher and leader ! He is good and great 
 
 According to the deeds a pope can do ; 
 Most liberal, save those bonds ; affectionate, 
 
 As princes may be ; and, as priests are, true — 
 

 CASA GUJDI WINDOWS. 7] 
 
 But only the ninth Pius after eight, 
 
 When all *s praised most. At best and hopefullest, 
 He 's pope — we want a man ! his heart beats warm, 
 
 But, like the prince enchanted to the waist, 
 He sits in stone, and hardens by a charm 
 
 Into the marble of his throne high-placed ! 
 Mild benediction, waves his saintly arm — 
 
 So good ! but what we want 's a perfect man, 
 Complete and all alive : half travertine 
 
 Half suits our need, and ill subserves our plan. 
 Feet, knees, nerves, sinews, energies divine 
 
 Were never yet too much for men who ran 
 In such exalted ways as this of thine, 
 
 Deliverer whom we seek, whoe'er thou art, 
 Pope, prince, or peasant ! If, indeed, the first, 
 
 The noblest, therefore ! since the heroic heart 
 
72 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Within thee must be great enough to burst 
 Those trammels buckling to the baser part 
 
 Thy saintly peers in Rome, who crossed and cursed 
 With the same finger. 
 
 Come, appear, be found, 
 If pope or peasant, come ! we hear the cock, 
 
 The courtier of the mountains when first crowned 
 With golden dawn ; and orient glories flock 
 
 To meet the sun upon the highest ground. 
 Take voice and work ! we wait to hear thee knock 
 
 At some one of our Florentine nine gates, 
 On each of which was imaged a sublime 
 
 Face of a Tuscan genius, which, for hate's 
 And love's sake both, our Florence in her prime 
 

 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Turned boldly on all comers to her states, 
 As heroes turned their shields in antique time, 
 
 Blazoned with honourable acts. And though 
 The gates are blank now of such images, 
 
 And Petrarch looks no more from Nicolo 
 Toward dear Arezzo, 'twixt the acacia trees, 
 
 Nor Dante, from gate Gallo — still we know, 
 Despite the razing of the blazonries, 
 
 Remains the consecration of the shield, — 
 The dead heroic faces will start out 
 
 On all these gates, if foes should take the field, 
 And blend sublimely, at the earliest shout, 
 
 With our live fighters, who will scorn to yield 
 A hair's-breadth ev^n, when, gazing round about, 
 
 They find in what a glorious company 
 They fight the foes of Florence ! Who will grudge 
 

 74 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 His one poor life, when that great man we see, 
 Has given five hundred years, the world being judge, 
 
 To help the glory of his Italy ? 
 Who, born the fair side of the Alps, will budge, 
 
 When Dante stays, when Ariosto stays, 
 When Petrarch stays, for ever ? Ye bring swords, 
 
 My Tuscans ? Why, if wanted in this haze, 
 Bring swords, but first bring souls ! — bring thoughts 
 and words 
 
 Unrusted by a tear of yesterday's, 
 Yet awful by its wrong, and cut these cords 
 
 And mow this green lush falseness to the roots, 
 And shut the mouth of hell below the swathe ! 
 
 And if ye can bring songs too, let the lute's 
 Recoverable music softly bathe 
 
 Some poet's hand, that, through all bursts and bruits 
 
CASA GTJIDI WINDOWS. 75 
 
 Of popular passion — all unripe and rathe 
 
 Convictions of the popular intellect — 
 Ye may not lack a finger up the air, 
 
 Annunciative, reproving, pure, erect, 
 To show which way your first Ideal bare 
 
 The whiteness of its wings, when, sorely pecked 
 By falcons on your wrists, it unaware 
 
 Arose up overhead, and out of sight. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Meanwhile, let all the far ends of the world 
 
 Breathe back the deep breath of their old delight, 
 
 To swell the Italian banner just unfurled. 
 Help, lands of Europe ! for, if Austria fight, 
 
 The drums will bar your slumber. Who had curled 
 The laurel for your thousand artists' brows, 
 
76 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 If these Italian hands had planted none ? 
 
 And who can sit down idle in the house, 
 Nor hear appeals from Buonarotti's stone 
 
 And RaffaeFs canvas, rousing and to rouse ? 
 Where 's Poussin's master ? Gallic Avignon 
 
 Bred Laura, and Vaucluse's fount has stirred 
 The heart of Trance too strongly, — as it lets 
 
 Its little stream out, like a wizard's bird 
 Which bounds upon its emerald wings, and wets 
 
 The rocks on each side — that she should not gird 
 Her loins with Charlemagne's sword, when foes beset 
 
 The country of her Petrarch. Spain may well 
 Be minded how from Italy she caught, 
 
 To mingle with her tinkling Moorish bell, 
 A fuller cadence and a subtler thought ; 
 
 And even the New World, the receptacle 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Of freemen, may send glad men, as it ought, 
 To greet Vespucci Amerigo's door ; 
 
 While England claims, by trump of poetry, 
 Yerona, Venice, the Ravenna shore, 
 
 And dearer holds her Milton's Fiesole 
 
 Than Malvern with a sunset running o'er. 
 
 And Vallombrosa, we two went to see 
 
 Last June, beloved companion, — where sublime 
 The mountains live in holy families. 
 
 And the slow pinewoods ever climb and climb 
 Half up their breasts ; just stagger as they seize 
 
 Some grey crag — drop back with it many a time, 
 And straggle blindly down the precipice ! 
 
 The Vallombrosan brooks were strewn as thick 
 
78 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 That June-day, knee-deep, with dead beechen leaves, 
 
 As Milton saw them ere his heart grew sick, 
 And his eyes blind. I think the monks and beeves 
 
 Are all the same too : scarce they have changed the wick 
 On good St. Gualbert's altar, which receives 
 
 The convent's pilgrims ; and the pool in front 
 Wherein the Hill-stream trout are cast, to wait 
 
 The beatific vision, and the grunt 
 Used at refectory, keeps its weedy state, 
 
 To baffle saintly abbots, who would count 
 The fish across their breviary, nor 'bate 
 
 The measure of their steps. waterfalls 
 And forests ! sound and silence ! mountains bare, 
 
 That leap up peak by peak, and catch the palls 
 Of purple and silver mist, to rend and share 
 
 With one another, at electric calls 
 

 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 79 
 
 Of life in the sunbeams, — till we cannot dare 
 
 Fix your shapes, learn your number ! we must think 
 Your beauty and your glory helped to fill 
 
 The cup of Milton's soul so to the brink, 
 That he no more was thirsty when God's will 
 
 Had shattered to his sense the last chain-link 
 By winch he drew from Nature's visible 
 
 The fresh well-water. Satisfied by this, 
 He sang of Adam's paradise and smiled, 
 
 Remembering Yallombrosa. Therefore is 
 The place divine to English man and child — 
 
 We all love Italy. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Our Italy 's 
 The darling of the earth — the treasury, piled 
 
80 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 With reveries of gentle ladies, flung 
 Aside, like ravelled silk, from life's worn stuff' — 
 
 With coins of scholars' fancy, which, being rung 
 On work-day counter, still sound silver-proof — 
 
 In short, with all the dreams of dreamers young, 
 Before their heads have time for slipping off 
 
 Hope's pillow to the ground. How oft, indeed, 
 We all have sent our souls out from the north, 
 
 On bare white feet which would not print nor bleed, 
 To climb the Alpine passes and look forth, 
 
 Where the low murmuring Lombard rivers lead 
 Their bee-like way to gardens almost worth 
 
 The sight which thou and I see afterward 
 Prom Tuscan Bellosguardo, wide awake, 
 
 When standing on the actual, blessed sward 
 Where Galileo stood at nights to take 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 81 
 
 The vision of the stars, we find it hard, 
 Gazing upon the earth and heaven, to make 
 
 A choice of beauty. Therefore let us all 
 In England, or in any other land 
 
 Refreshed once by the fountain-rise and fall 
 Of dreams of this fair south, — who understand 
 
 A little how the Tuscan musical 
 Vowels do round themselves, as if they planned 
 
 Eternities of separate sweetness, — we 
 Who loved Sorrento vines in picture-book, 
 
 Or ere in wine-cup we pledged faith or glee — 
 Who loved Borne' s wolf, with demi-gods at suck, 
 
 Or ere we loved truth's own divinity, — 
 Who loved, in brief, the classic hill and brook, 
 
 And Ovid's dreaming tales, and Petrarch's song, 
 Or ere we loved Love's self ! — why, let us give 
 
82 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 The blessing of our souls, and wish them strong 
 To bear it to the height where prayers arrive, 
 
 When faithful spirits pray against a wrong ; 
 To this great cause of southern men, who strive 
 
 In God's name for man's rights, and shall not fail ! 
 
 Behold, they shall not fail. The shouts ascend 
 
 Above the shrieks, in Naples, and prevail. 
 Eows of shot corpses, waiting for the end 
 
 Of burial, seem to smile up straight and pale 
 Into the azure air, and apprehend 
 
 That final gun-flash from Palermo's coast, 
 Which lightens their apocalypse of death. 
 
 So let them die ! The world shows nothing lost ; 
 Therefore, not blood ! Above or underneath, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 83 
 
 What matter, brothers, if we keep our post 
 Or truth's and duty's side ? As sword to sheath, 
 
 Dust turns to grave, but souls find place in Heaven. 
 friends, heroic daring is success, 
 
 The eucharistic bread requires no leaven ; 
 
 And though your ends were hopeless, we should bless 
 Your cause as holy ! Strive — and, having striven, 
 Take, for God's recompense, that righteousness ! 
 
 g2 
 
84 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 PAST II. 
 
 I wrote a meditation and a dream, 
 
 Hearing a little child sing in the street 
 I leant upon his music as a theme, 
 
 Till it gave way beneath my heart's full beat, 
 Which tried at an exultant prophecy 
 
 But dropped before the measure was complete- 
 Alas, for songs and hearts ! Tuscany, 
 
 Dante's Florence, is the type too plain ? 
 Didst thou, too, only sing of liberty, 
 
 As little children take up a high strain 
 With unintentioned voices, and break off 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 85 
 
 To sleep upon their mothers' knees again ? 
 Could' st thou not watch one hour? Then, sleep 
 enough — 
 
 That sleep may hasten manhood, and sustain 
 The faint pale spirit with some muscular stuff. 
 
 But we, who cannot slumber as thou dost, 
 We thinkers, who have thought for thee and failed, — 
 
 We hopers, who have hoped for thee and lost, — 
 We poets, wandered round by dreams,* who hailed 
 
 Erom this Atrides' roof (with lintel-post 
 Which still drips blood, — the worse part hath prevailed) 
 
 The fire-voice of the beacons, to declare 
 Troy taken, sorrow ended, — cozened through 
 
 * Referring to the well-known opening passage of the Agamemnon of 
 ^schylus. 
 
86 CASA GTJIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 A crimson sunset in a misty air, — 
 What now remains for such as we, to do ? 
 
 — God's judgments, peradventure, will He bare 
 To the roots of thunder, if we kneel and sue ? 
 
 in. 
 
 From Casa Guidi windows I looked forth, 
 And saw ten thousand eyes of Florentines 
 
 Flash back the triumph of the Lombard north, — 
 Saw fifty banners, freighted with the signs 
 
 And exultations of the awakened earth, 
 Float on above the multitude in lines, 
 
 Straight to the Pitti. So, the vision went. 
 And so, between those populous rough hands 
 
 Eaised in the sun, Duke Leopold outleant, 
 And took the patriot's oath, which henceforth stands 
 
CASA GTJIDI WINDOWS. 87 
 
 Among the oaths of perjurers, eminent 
 To catch the lightnings ripened for these lands. 
 
 Why swear at all, thou false Duke Leopold ? 
 What need to swear ? What need to boast thy blood 
 
 Taintless of Austria, and thy heart unsold 
 Away from Florence ? It was understood 
 
 God made thee not too vigorous or too bold, 
 And men had patience with thy quiet mood, 
 
 And women, pity, as they saw thee pace 
 Their festive streets with premature grey hairs : 
 
 We turned the mild dejection of thy face 
 To princely meanings, took thy wrinkling cares 
 
 For ruffling hopes, and called thee weak, not base. 
 Better to light the torches for more prayers 
 
88 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 And smoke the pale Madonnas at the shrine, 
 Being still " our poor Grand-duke/' " our good Grand- 
 duke," 
 
 " Who cannot help the Austrian in his line/' 
 Than write an oath upon a nation's book 
 
 For men to spit at with scorn's blurring brine ! 
 AVho dares forgive what none can overlook ? 
 
 v. 
 
 For me, I do repent me in tins dust 
 Of towns and temples, which makes Italy, — 
 
 I sigh amid the sighs which breathe a gust 
 Of dying century to century, 
 
 Around us on the uneven crater-crust 
 Of the old worlds, — I bow my soul and knee, 
 
 And sigh and do repent me of my fault 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 89 
 
 That ever I believed the man was true. 
 
 These sceptred strangers shun the common salt, 
 And, therefore, when the general board 's in view, 
 
 They standing up to carve for blind and halt, 
 We should suspect the viands which ensue. 
 
 And I repent that in this time and place, 
 Where all the corpse-lights of experience burn 
 
 From Caesar's and Lorenzo's festering race, 
 To illumine groping reasoners, I could learn 
 
 No better counsel for a simple case 
 Than to put faith in princes, in my turn. 
 
 Heavens ! had the death-piles of the ancient years 
 Flared up in vain before me ? Knew I not 
 
 What stench arises from their purple gears, — 
 And how the sceptres witness whence they got 
 
 Their briar-wood, crackling through the atmosphere's 
 

 00 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Foul smoke, by princely perjuries, kept hot ? 
 
 Forgive me, ghosts of patriots, — Brutus, thou, 
 Who trailest downhill into life again 
 
 Thy blood- weighed cloak, to indict me with thy slow 
 Reproachful eyes ! — for being taught in vain 
 
 That while the illegitimate Csesars show 
 Of meaner stature than the first full strain, 
 
 (Confessed incompetent to conquer Gaul) 
 They swoon as feebly and cross Rubicons 
 
 As rashly as any Julius of them all. 
 Forgive, that I forgot the mind that runs 
 
 Through absolute races, too unsceptical ! 
 I saw the man among his little sons, 
 
 His lips warm with their kisses while he swore, — 
 And I, because I am a woman, I, 
 
 Who felt my own child's coming life before 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 91 
 
 The prescience of my soul, and held faith high, 
 
 I could not bear to think, whoever bore, 
 That lips, so warmed, could shape so cold a He. 
 
 From Casa Guidi windows I looked out, 
 Again looked, and beheld a different sight. 
 
 The Duke had fled before the people's shout 
 " Long live the Duke ! " A people, to speak right, 
 
 Should speak as soft as courtiers, lest a doubt 
 Turn gracious sovereign brows to curdled white. 
 
 Moreover that same dangerous shouting meant 
 Some gratitude for future favours, which 
 
 Were only promised ; — the Constituent 
 Implied ; — the whole being subject to the hitch 
 
 In motu proprios, very incident 
 
92 CASA GTJIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 To all these Czars, from Paul to Paulovitch. 
 
 Whereat the people rose up in the dust 
 Of the Duke's flying feet, and shouted still, 
 
 And loudly, only, this time, as was just, 
 Not " Live the Duke/' who had fled, for good or ill 
 
 But " Live the People," who remained and must, 
 The unrenounced and unrenounceable. 
 
 Long live the people ! How they lived ! and boiled 
 And bubbled in the cauldron of the street ! 
 
 How the young blustered, nor the old recoiled, 
 And what a thunderous stir of tongues and feet 
 
 Trod flat the palpitating bells, and foiled 
 The joy-guns of their echo, shattering it ! 
 
 How they pulled down the Duke's arms everywhere ! 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 93 
 
 How they set up new cafe- signs, to show 
 
 Where patriots might sip ices in pure air — 
 (Yet the fresh paint smelt somewhat). To and fro 
 
 How marched the civic guard, and stopped to stare 
 When boys broke windows in a civic glow. 
 
 How rebel songs were sung to loyal tunes, 
 And the pope cursed, in ecclesiastic metres ! 
 
 How all the Circoli grew large as moons, 
 And all the speakers, moonstruck ! — thankful greeters 
 
 Of prospects which struck poor the ducal boons, 
 A mere free press, and chambers ! — frank repeaters 
 
 Of great Guerazzi's praises. . . . " There 's a man 
 The father of the land ! — who, truly great, 
 
 Takes off that national disgrace and ban, 
 The farthing tax upon our Florence-gate, 
 
 And saves Italia as he only can." 
 
91 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS, 
 
 How all the nobles fled, and would not wait, 
 
 Because they were most noble ! which being so, 
 How the mob vowed to burn their palaces, 
 
 Because they were too free to have leave to go. 
 How grown men raged at Austria's wickedness, 
 And smoked, — while fifty striplings in a row 
 Marched straight to Piedmont for the wrong's redress ! 
 
 Who says we failed in duty, we who wore 
 Black velvet like Italian democrats, 
 
 Who slashed our sleeves like patriots, nor forswore 
 The true republic in the form of hats ? 
 
 We chased the archbishop from the duomo door — 
 We chalked the walls with bloody caveats 
 
 Against all tyrants. If we did not fight 
 Exactly, we fired muskets up the void, 
 To show that victory was ours of right. 
 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 95 
 
 We met, discussed in every place, self-buoyed 
 
 Except, perhaps, i' the chambers, day and night : 
 We proved that all the poor should be employed, 
 
 And yet the rich not worked for anywise, — 
 Pay certified, yet payers abrogated, 
 
 Pull work secured, yet liabilities 
 To over-work excluded, — not one bated 
 
 Of all our holidays, that still, at twice 
 Or thrice a-week, are moderately rated. 
 
 We proved that Austria was dislodged, or would 
 Or should be, and that Tuscany in arms 
 
 Should, would, dislodge her, in high hardihood ! 
 And yet, to leave our piazzas, shops, and farms, 
 
 For the bare sake of fighting, was not good. 
 We proved that also — " Did we carry charms 
 
 Against being killed ourselves, that we should rush 
 
96 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 On killing others ? What ! desert herewith 
 
 Our wives and mothers ! — was that duty ? Tush ! " 
 At which we shook the sword within the sheath, 
 
 Like heroes — only louder ! and the flush 
 Ean up our cheek to meet the victor's wreath. 
 
 Nay, what we proved, we shouted — how we shouted, 
 (Especially the little boys did) planting 
 
 That tree of liberty whose fruit is doubted 
 Because the roots are not of nature's granting — 
 
 A tree of good and evil ! — none, without it, 
 Grow gods ! — alas, and, with it, men were wanting. 
 
 O holy knowledge, holy liberty, 
 holy rights of nations ! If I speak 
 These bitter things against the jugglery 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 97 
 
 Of days that in your names proved blind and weak, 
 
 It is that tears are bitter. When we see 
 The brown skulls grin at death in churchyards bleak, 
 
 We do not cry, " This Yorick is too light/' — 
 For death grows deathlier with that' mouth he makes. 
 
 So with my mocking. Bitter things I write, 
 Because my soul is bitter for your sakes, 
 
 O freedom ! my Florence ! 
 
 Men who might 
 Do greatly in a universe that breaks 
 
 And burns, must ever know before they do. 
 Courage and patience are but sacrifice; 
 
 And sacrifice is offered for and to 
 Something conceived of. Each man pays a price 
 
98 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 For what himself counts precious, whether true 
 Or false the appreciation it implies. 
 
 Here, was no knowledge, no conception, nought ! 
 Desire was absent, that provides great deeds 
 
 From out the greatness of prevenient thought ; 
 And action, action, like a flame that needs 
 
 A steady breath and fuel, being caught 
 Up, like a burning reed from other reeds, 
 
 Flashed in the empty and uncertain air, 
 Then wavered, then went out. Behold, who blames 
 
 A crooked course, when not a goal is there, 
 To round the fervid striving of the games ? 
 
 An ignorance of means may minister 
 To greatness, but an ignorance of aims 
 
 Makes it impossible to be great at all. 
 So, with our Tuscans ! Let none dare to say, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 99 
 
 Here virtue never can be national, 
 Here fortitude can never cut its way 
 
 Between the Austrian muskets, out of thrall. 
 I tell you rather, that whoever may 
 
 Discern true ends here, shall grow pure enough 
 To love them, brave enough to strive for them, 
 
 And strong to reach them, though the roadsbe rough : 
 That having learnt — by no mere apophthegm — 
 
 Not the mere draping of a graceful stuff 
 About a statue, broidered at the hem, — 
 
 Not the mere trilling on an opera stage, 
 Of c liberta ' to bravos — (a fair word, 
 
 Yet too allied to inarticulate rage 
 And breathless sobs, for singing, though the chord 
 
 Were deeper than they struck it !) — but the gauge 
 Of civil wants sustained, and wrongs abhorred, — 
 
 h2 
 
100 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 The serious, sacred meaning and full use 
 Of freedom for a nation, — then, indeed, 
 
 Our Tuscans, underneath the bloody dews 
 Of a new morning, rising up agreed 
 
 And bold, will want no Saxon souls or thews, 
 To sweep their piazzas clear of Austria's breed. 
 
 Alas, alas ! it was not so this time. 
 Conviction was not, courage failed, and truth 
 
 Was something to be doubted of. The mime 
 Changed masks, because a mime ; the tide as smooth 
 
 In running in as out ; no sense of crime 
 Because no sense of virtue. Sudden ruth 
 
 Seized on the people . . . they would have again 
 Their good Grand- duke, and leave Guerazzi, though 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 101 
 
 He took that tax from Florence : — n Much in vain 
 He took it from the market-carts, we trow, 
 
 While urgent that no market-men remain, 
 But all march off, and leave the spade and plough, 
 
 To die among the Lombards. Was it thus 
 The dear paternal Duke did ? Live the Duke ! " 
 
 At which the joy-bells multitudinous, 
 Swept by an opposite wind, as loudly shook. 
 
 Recall the mild Archbishop to his house, 
 To bless the people with his frightened look, 
 
 For he shall not be hanged yet, we intend. 
 Seize on Guerazzi ; guard him in full view, 
 
 Or else we stab him in the back, to end. 
 Rub out those chalked devices ! Set up new 
 
 The Duke's arms; doff your Phrygian caps; and mend 
 The pavement of the piazzas broke into 
 
102 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 By the bare poles of freedom ! Smooth the way 
 For the Duke's carriage, lest his highness sigh 
 
 " Here trees of liberty grew yesterday." 
 Long live the Duke ! — How roared the cannonry, 
 
 How rocked each campanile, and through a spray 
 Of nosegays, wreaths, and kerchiefs, tossed on high, 
 
 How marched the civic guard, the people still 
 Shouting — especially the little boys ! 
 
 Alas, poor people, of an unfledged will 
 Most fitly expressed by such a callow voice ! 
 
 Alas, still poorer Duke, incapable 
 Of being worthy even of that noise ! 
 
 XL 
 
 You think he came back instantly, with thanks 
 And tears in his faint eyes, and hands extended 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 103 
 
 To stretch the franchise through their utmost ranks ? 
 That having, like a father, apprehended, 
 
 He came to pardon fatherly those pranks 
 Played out, and now in filial service ended ? — 
 
 That some love token, like a prince, he threw, 
 To meet the people's love-call, in return ? 
 
 Well, how he came I will relate to you ; 
 And if your hearts should burn, why, hearts must burn, 
 
 To make the ashes which things old and new 
 Shall be washed clean in — as tins Duke will learn. 
 
 XII. 
 
 From Casa Guidi windows, gazing, then, 
 I saw and witness how the Duke came back. 
 
 The regular tramp of horse and tread of men 
 Did smite the silence like an anvil black 
 

 104 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 And sparkless. With her wide eyes at full strain, 
 Our Tuscan nurse exclaimed, " Mack, alack, 
 
 Signora ! these shall be the Austrians." "Nay, 
 Hush, hush," I answered, " do not wake the child ! " 
 
 For so, my two-months' baby sleeping lay 
 In milky dreams upon the bed and smiled j 
 
 And I thought " he shall sleep on, while he may, 
 Through the world's baseness. Not being yet defiled, 
 
 Why should he be disturbed by what is done ? " 
 Then, gazing, I beheld the long-drawn street 
 
 Live out, from end to end, full in the sun, 
 With Austria's thousands. Sword and bayonet, 
 
 Horse, foot, artillery, — cannons rolling on, 
 Like blind, slow storm-clouds gestant with the heat 
 
 Of undeveloped lightnings, each bestrode 
 By a single man, dust-white from head to heel, 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 105 
 
 Indifferent as the dreadful thing he rode, 
 Calm as a sculptured Fate, and terrible ! 
 
 As some smooth river which hath overflowed, 
 Doth slow and silent down its current wheel 
 
 A loosened forest, all the pines erect, — 
 So, swept, in mute significance of storm, 
 
 The marshalled thousands, — not an eye deflect 
 To left or right, to catch a novel form 
 
 Of the famed city adorned by architect 
 And carver, nor of Beauties live and warm 
 
 Scared at the casements, — all, straightforward eyes 
 And faces, held as steadfast as their swords, 
 
 And cognisant of acts, not imageries. 
 The key, Tuscans, too well fits the wards ! 
 
 Ye asked for mimes ; these bring you tragedies — 
 For purple ; these shall wear it as your lords. 
 
106 CASA GTJIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Ye played like children : die like innocents ! 
 Ye mimicked lightnings with a torch : the crack 
 
 Of the actual bolt, your pastime, circumvents. 
 Ye called up ghosts, believing they were slack 
 
 To follow any voice from Gilboa's tents, . . . 
 Here *s Samuel ! — and, so, Grand-dukes come back ! 
 
 And yet, they are no prophets though they come. 
 That awful mantle they are drawing close, 
 
 Shall be searched, one day, by the shafts of Doom, 
 Through double folds now hoodwinking the brows. 
 
 Resuscitated monarchs disentomb 
 Grave-reptiles with them, in their new life-throes : 
 
 Let such beware. Behold, the people waits, 
 Like God. As He, in his serene of might, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 107 
 
 So they, in their endurance of long straits. 
 Ye stamp no nation out, though day and night 
 
 Ye tread them with that absolute heel which grates 
 Aud grinds them flat from all attempted height. 
 
 You kill worms sooner with a garden-spade 
 Than you kill peoples : peoples will not die ; 
 
 The tail curls stronger when you lop the head j 
 They writhe at every wound and multiply, 
 
 And shudder into a heap of life that 's made 
 Thus vital from God's own vitality. 
 
 'Tis hard to shrivel back a day of God's 
 Once fixed for judgment : 'tis as hard to change 
 
 The people's, when they rise beneath their loads 
 And heave them from their backs with violent wrench, 
 
 To crush the oppressor. Tor that judgment rod 's 
 The measure of tins popular revenge. 
 
108 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Meantime, from Casa Guidi windows we 
 Beheld the armament of Austria flow 
 
 Into the drowning heart of Tuscany. 
 And yet none wept, none cursed ; or, if 'twas so, 
 
 They wept and cursed in silence. Silently 
 Our noisy Tuscans watched the invading foe ; 
 
 They had learnt silence. Pressed against the wall 
 And grouped upon the church-steps opposite, 
 
 A few pale men and women stared at all. 
 God knows what they were feeling, with their white 
 
 Constrained faces ! — they, so prodigal 
 Of cry and gesture when the world goes right, 
 
 Or wrong indeed. But here, was depth of wrong, 
 And here, still water : they were silent here : 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 109 
 
 And through that sentient silence, struck along 
 That measured tramp from which it stood out clear, 
 
 Distinct the sound and silence, like a gong 
 Tolled upon midnight, — each made awfuller ; 
 
 While every soldier in his cap displayed 
 A leaf of olive. Dusty, bitter thing ! 
 
 Was such plucked at Novara, is it said ? 
 
 A cry is up in England, which doth ring 
 
 The hollow world through, that for ends of trade 
 
 And virtue, and God's better worshipping, 
 
 We henceforth should exalt the name of Peace, 
 
 And leave those rusty wars that eat the soul, — 
 (Besides their clippings at our golden fleece.) 
 
 I, too, have loved peace, and from bole to bole 
 
110 CAS A GTJIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Of immemorial, undeciduous trees, 
 Would write, as lovers use, upon a scroll 
 
 The holy name of Peace, and set it high 
 Where none should pluck it down. On trees, I 
 say,— 
 
 Not upon gibbets ! — With the greenery 
 Of dewy branches and the flowery May, 
 
 Sweet mediation 'twixt the earth and sky, 
 Providing, for the shepherd's holiday ! 
 
 Not upon gibbets ! — though the vulture leaves 
 Some quiet to the bones he first picked bare. 
 
 Not upon dungeons ! though the wretch who grieves 
 And groans within, stirs not the outer air 
 
 As much as little field-mice stir the sheaves. 
 Not upon chain-bolts ! though the slave's despair 
 
 Has dulled his helpless, miserable brain, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. Ill 
 
 And left him blank beneath the freeman's whip. 
 
 To sing and langh ont idiocies of pain. 
 Nor yet on starving homes ! where many a lip 
 
 Has sobbed itself asleep through curses vain ! 
 I love no peace which is not fellowship, 
 
 And which includes not mercy. I would have 
 Rather, the raking of the guns across 
 
 The world, and shrieks against Heaven's architrave. 
 Rather, the struggle in the slippery fosse, 
 
 Of dying men and horses, and the wave 
 Blood-bubbling. . . . Enough said ! — By Christ's own 
 cross, 
 
 And by the faint heart of my womanhood, 
 Such things are better than a Peace which sits 
 
 Beside the hearth in self-commended mood, 
 And takes no thought how wind and rain by fits 
 
112 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Are howling out of doors against the good 
 Of the poor wanderer. What ! your peace admits 
 
 Of outside anguish while it sits at home ? 
 I loathe to take its name upon my tongue — 
 
 It is no peace. 'Tis treason, stiff with doom, — 
 'Tis gagged despair, and inarticulate wrong, 
 
 Annihilated Poland, stifled Rome, 
 Dazed Naples, Hungary fainting 'neath the thong, 
 
 And Austria wearing a smooth olive-leaf 
 On her brute forehead, while her hoofs outpress 
 
 The life from these Italian souls, in brief. 
 O Lord of Peace, who art Lord of Righteousness, 
 
 Constrain the anguished worlds from sin and grief, 
 Pierce them with conscience, purge them with 
 redress, 
 
 And give us peace which is no counterfeit ! 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 113 
 
 XVI. 
 
 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 weary of these windows. Sights 
 Come thick enough and clear enough with thought, 
 
 Without the sunshine ; 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, 
 
114 CAS A GU1DI WINDOWS. 
 
 From Casa Guidi windows, what is done 
 
 Or undone. Whatsoever deeds they be, 
 Pope Pius will be glorified in none. 
 
 xvn. 
 
 Hecord 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 ; 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 115 
 
 And here the impenitent thief s has had its turn, 
 
 As God knows ; and the people on their knees 
 Scoff and toss back the croziers, 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, 
 
 12 
 
116 CASA GUID1 WINDOWS. 
 
 Among the Popedom' s hundred heads of stone 
 Which blink down on you from the roofs 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 'a a rare case — so, by hook and crook 
 They take the advantage, agonizing Christ 
 
 By rustier nails than those of Cedron's brook, 
 F the people's body very cheaply priced ; 
 
 Quoting high priesthood out of Holy book, 
 And buying death-fields with the sacrificed. 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. H" 
 
 Priests, priests ! — there 's no such name, — God'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 Godhead, nicker with the unrest 
 Of human, pitiful heartbeats. 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, 
 
118 CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 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 St. Paul by working at the tent, 
 
 Become infallible guides by speaking truth, 
 And excommunicate their own 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, 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 119 
 
 But all to perish ! — 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 he 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 has his due. 
 
120 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 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 analysis 
 Of masses who cry only : keep thy ken 
 
 Clear as thy soul is virtuous. Heroes' blood 
 Splashed up against thy noble brow in Rome. — 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 121 
 
 Let such not blind thee to the 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 ? " 
 Instead, rose Italy and testified, 
 
 " 'Twas I, and 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 
 
122 CASA GUID1 WINDOWS. 
 
 At unawares i' the throat. "Was thus fulfilled 
 
 An omen of great 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 of Rome, was ! 
 
 Let thy weft 
 
 Be of one woof and warp, Mazzini ! — stand 
 With no man of a spotless fame bereft — 
 
 Not for Italia ! Neither stand apart, 
 No, not for the republic ! — from those pure 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 123 
 
 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, at God's signal, war-trumps newly blown 
 
 Shall yet annuntiate to the world's applause. 
 
 Just 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 Eussias and the vast Americas, 
 As a queen gathers in her robes amid 
 
 Her golden cincture, — isles, peninsulas, 
 
124 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Capes, continents, far inland countries hid 
 By jaspar sands and hills of chrysopras, 
 
 All trailing in their splendours through the door 
 Of the new Crystal Palace. Every nation, 
 
 To every other nation, strange of yore, 
 Shall face to face give civic salutation, 
 
 And hold up in a proud right hand before 
 That congress, the best work which she could fashion 
 
 By her best means — " These corals, will you please 
 To match against your oaks ? They grow as fast 
 
 Within my wilderness of purple seas." — 
 " Tins diamond stared upon me as I passed 
 
 (As a live god's eye from a marble frieze) 
 Along a dark of diamonds. Is it classed ? " — 
 
 " I wove these stuffs so subtly, that the gold 
 Swims to the surface of the silk, like cream, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 125 
 
 And curdles to fair patterns, Ye behold ! " — 
 " These delicated muslins rather seem 
 
 Than be, you think? Nay, touch them and be 
 bold, 
 Though such veiled Chakhr'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.* 
 
 The music, winding through the stops, upsprings 
 To make the player very rich. Compute." — 
 
 " Here 's goblet-glass, to take in with your wine 
 The very sun its grapes were ripened under. 
 
 Drink light and juice together, and each fine." — 
 
 * Philostratus relates of Apollonius that he objected to the musical 
 instrument of Linus the Rhodian, its incompetence to enrich and beautify. 
 The history of music in our day, would, upon the former point, sufficiently 
 confute the philosopher. 
 
126 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 " This model of a steam-ship moves your wonder ? 
 
 You should behold it crushing 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 Baffael, as we know, 
 Not Eaffael nature. "Will it help my case ? " — 
 
 " Methinks you will not match this steel of ours V — 
 " Nor you this porcelain ! One might think the clay 
 
 Retained in it the larvse 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." 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 127 
 
 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 found 
 
128 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 No remedy, my England, for such woes ? 
 
 No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound, 
 No entrance for the exiled ? No repose, 
 
 Eussia, for knouted Poles worked underground, 
 And gentle ladies bleached among the snows ? — 
 
 No mercy for the slave, America ? — 
 No hope for Eome, free Prance, chivalric France ? — 
 
 Alas, great nations have great shames, I say. 
 No pity, world, no tender utterance 
 
 Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way 
 To 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, — a justice to be done. 
 So, prosper ! 
 
CASA GU1DI WINDOWS. 129 
 
 Iii the name of Italy, 
 Meantime, her patriot dead have benizon ! 
 
 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 encumber 
 
 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 god made wroth, 
 
130 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Against each piled injustice. Ay, the least 
 Dead for Italia, not in vain has died, 
 
 However vainly, ere life's struggle ceased, 
 To mad dissimilar ends they swerved aside. 
 
 Each grave her nationality has pieced 
 By its own noble 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 sea-weeds lit 
 
CAS A GUIDI WINDOWS. 131 
 
 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. 
 Well he remembers that she could not choose. 
 
 A memorable grave ! Another is 
 At Genoa, where 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, 
 
 K 2 
 
132 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 And naked to the soul, that none might say 
 His kingship covered what was base and bleared 
 
 With treason, he went out an exile, yea, 
 An exiled patriot ! Let him be revered. 
 
 XXHI. 
 
 Yea, verily, Charles Albert has died well : 
 And if he lived not all so, as one spoke, 
 
 The sin pass softly with the passing 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 bike popes and dukes at least — 
 ' Thank God for it/ And now that he is dead, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 133 
 
 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 ! 
 1 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 ? 
 
].34 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Nothing but death-songs ? — Yet, be it understood, 
 Life throbs in noble 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 passage 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, 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 135 
 
 Not two years old, and let me see thee more ! 
 It grows along thy amber curls, to shine 
 
 Brighter than elsewhere. Now, look straight before, 
 And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine, 
 
 And from thy 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 God'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 assume 
 
 That, less than we have, thou hast learnt of God. 
 Stand out, my blue-eyed prophet ! — thou, to whom 
 
 The earliest world-day light that ever flowed, 
 Through Casa Guidi windows, chanced to come ! 
 
136 CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 
 
 Now shake the glittering nimbus of thy hair, 
 And be God's witness ; — that the elemental 
 
 New springs of life are gushing everywhere, 
 To cleanse the water courses, 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 ? 
 And we . . . despond we for the future, though 
 
 Posterity is smiling at our knees, 
 Convicting us of folly ? Let us go — 
 
CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. 13', 
 
 We will trust God. The blank interstices 
 Men take for ruins, He will build into 
 
 With pillared marbles rare, or knit across 
 With generous arches, till the fane 'a complete. 
 
 This world has no perdition, if some loss. 
 
 Such cheer I gather from thy smiling, Sweet ! 
 
 The self same cherub faces winch emboss 
 The rail, lean inward to the mercy-seat. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Page 4, 1. 5. 
 " Void at Verona" &c. 
 
 They show at Verona an empty trough of stone as the tomb 
 of Juliet. 
 
 Page 6, 1. 13. 
 " That 's Michel Angelo ! his statues wait." 
 
 In the Sagrestia Nuova, where the statues of Day and Night, 
 Dawn and Twilight, recline on the tombs of Giuliano de' Medici, 
 third son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Lorenzo of Urbino, 
 his grandson. Strozzi's epigram on the Night, with Michel 
 Angelo's rejoinder, is well known. 
 
 Page 8, 1. 3. 
 " Thou toert commanded to build up in snow? 
 
 This mocking task was set by Pietro, the unworthy successor 
 of Lorenzo the Maemificent. 
 
NOTES. 139 
 
 Page 18. 1. 9. 
 
 " When men make, record, with the flowers they strew 
 
 • Savonarola's soul? " &c. 
 
 Savonarola was burnt in martyrdom for his testimony against 
 Papal corruptions as early as Marcb, 1498 : and, as late as our 
 own day, it is a custom in Florence to strew violets on the pave- 
 ment where he suffered, in grateful recognition of the anniver- 
 sary. 
 
 Page 23, 1. 3. 
 
 " ivhere, at ■plague-time, Macchiavel.' 
 
 See his description of the plague in Florence. 
 
 Page 24, 1. 1. 
 
 "A Icing stood barebefore its sovran groc." 
 
 Charles of Anjou, whom, in his passage through Florence, 
 Cimabue allowed to see this picture while yet in his " Bottega." 
 The populace followed the royal visitor, and in the universal 
 delight and admiration, the quarter of the city in which the 
 artist lived was called " Borgo Allegri." The picture was carried 
 in a triumph to the church and deposited there. 
 
 Page 25, 1. 13. 
 
 " Yet rightly was young Giotto talked about, 
 Whom Cimabue found among tlie sheep." 
 
 ■ How Cimabue found Giotto, the shepherd-boy, sketching a ram 
 
140 NOTES. 
 
 of his flock upon a stone, is a pretty story told by Vasari, — who 
 also relates how the elder artist Ma 
 of the successes of the new school. 
 
 also relates how the elder artist Margheritone died " infastidito " 
 
 Page 43, 1. 5. 
 
 " in Santa Croce church, forlorn 
 
 ' >f any corpse,' &c. 
 
 The Florentines, to whom the Ravennese denied the body of 
 Dante which was asked of them in a " late remorse of love," have 
 given a cenotaph to their divine poet in this church. Something 
 less than a grave ! 
 
 Page 43, 1. 13. 
 " Good lovers of our age to track and plough." 
 
 In allusion to Mr. Kirkup's well-known discovery of Giotto's 
 fresco-portrait of Dante. 
 
 Page 80, 1. 14. 
 ,'• From Tuscan Bellosguardo," &c 
 
 Galileo's villa near Florence is built on an eminence called 
 Bellosguardo. 
 
 LONDON : 
 BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.