| |
JULIET OF NATIONS
I HEARD last night a little child so singing | |
| ’Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church, | |
| O bella libertà, O bella!—stringing | |
| The same words still on notes he went in search | |
| So high for, you concluded the upspringing | 5 |
| 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, | |
| While such a voice had leave to rise serene | |
| ’Twixt church and palace of a Florence street: | 10 |
| A little child, too, who not long had been | |
| By mother’s finger steadied on his feet, | |
| And still O bella libertà he sang. | |
| |
| Then I thought, musing, of the innumerous | |
| Sweet songs which still for Italy outrang | 15 |
| From older singers’ lips who sang not thus | |
| Exultingly and purely, yet, with pang | |
| Fast sheath’d in music, touch’d the heart of us | |
| So finely that the pity scarcely pain’d. | |
| I thought how Filicaja led on others, | 20 |
| Bewailers for their Italy enchain’d, | |
| And how they call’d her childless among mothers, | |
| Widow of empires, ay, and scarce refrain’d | |
| Cursing her beauty to her face, as brothers | |
| Might a sham’d sister’s,—“Had she been less fair | 25 |
| She were less wretched;”—how, evoking so | |
| From congregated wrong and heap’d despair | |
| Of men and women writhing under blow, | |
| Harrow’d and hideous in a filthy lair, | |
| Some personating Image wherein woe | 30 |
| Was wrapp’d in beauty from offending much, | |
| They call’d it Cybele, or Niobe, | |
| Or laid it corpse-like on a bier for such, | |
| Where all the world might drop for Italy | |
| Those cadenced tears which burn not where they touch,— | 35 |
| “Juliet of nations, canst thou die as we? | |
| And was the violet that crown’d thy head | |
| So over-large, though new buds made it rough, | |
| It slipp’d down and across thine eyelids dead, | |
| O sweet, fair Juliet?” Of such songs enough, | 40 |
| Too many of such complaints! behold, instead, | |
| Void at Verona, Juliet’s marble trough: | |
| As void as that is, are all images | |
| Men set between themselves and actual wrong, | |
| To catch the weight of pity, meet the stress | 45 |
| Of conscience,—since ’t is easier to gaze long | |
| On mournful masks and sad effigies | |
| Than on real, live, weak creatures cruch’d by strong. | |
| |
SURSUM CORDA
The sun strikes, through the windows, up the floor; | |
| Stand out in it, my own young Florentine, | 50 |
| 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 my soul, which fronts the future so, | 55 |
| With unabash’d 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, | 60 |
| 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 flow’d, | 65 |
| Through Casa Guidi windows chanced to come! | |
| 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! | 70 |
| 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 laboring moles. | |
| Howe’er the uneasy world is vex’d and wroth, | 75 |
| Young children, lifted high on parent souls, | |
| Look round them with a smile upon the mouth, | |
| And take for music every bell that tolls; | |
| (WHO said we should be better if like these?) | |
| But we sit murmuring for the future though | 80 |
| Posterity is smiling on our knees, | |
| Convicting us of folly. Let us go— | |
| We will trust God. The blank interstices | |
| Men take for ruins, He will build into | |
| With pillar’d marbles rare, or knit across | 85 |
| With generous arches, till the fane’s complete. | |
| This world has no perdition, if some loss. | |
| |
| Such cheer I gather from thy smiling, Sweet! | |
| The self-same cherub-faces which emboss | |
| The Vail, lean inward to the Mercy-seat. | 90 |
| |
