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Translated by W. D. Howells
YOUR Excellency is not pleased with me | |
| Because of certain jests I made of late, | |
| And, for my putting rogues in pillory, | |
| Accuse me of being anti-German. Wait, | |
| And hear a thing that happened recently | 5 |
| When wandering here and there one day as fate | |
| Led me, by some odd accident I ran | |
| On the old church St. Ambrose, at Milan. | |
| |
| My comrade of the moment was, by chance, | |
| The young son of one Sandro,—one of those | 10 |
| Troublesome heads,—an author of romance,— | |
| Promessi Sposi,—your Excellency knows | |
| The book perhaps?—has given it a glance? | |
| Ah, no? I see! God give your brain repose: | |
| With graver interests occupied, your head | 15 |
| To all such stuff as literature is dead. | |
| |
| I enter, and the church is full of troops: | |
| Of Northern soldiers, of Croatians, say, | |
| And of Bohemians, standing there in groups | |
| As stiff as dry poles stuck in vineyards,—nay, | 20 |
| As stiff as if impaled, and no one stoops | |
| Out of the plumb of soldierly array; | |
| All stand, with whiskers and mustache of tow, | |
| Before their God like spindles in a row. | |
| |
| I started back: I cannot well deny | 25 |
| That being rained down, as it were, and thrust, | |
| Into that herd of human cattle, I | |
| Could not suppress a feeling of disgust | |
| Unknown, I fancy, to your Excellency, | |
| By reason of your office. Pardon! I must | 30 |
| Say the church stank of heated grease, and that | |
| The very altar-candles seemed of fat. | |
| |
| But when the priest had risen to devote | |
| The mystic wafer, from the band that stood | |
| About the altar, came a sudden note | 35 |
| Of sweetness over my disdainful mood: | |
| A voice that, speaking from the brazen throat | |
| Of warlike trumpets, came like the subdued | |
| Moan of a people bound in sore distress, | |
| And thinking on lost hopes and happiness. | 40 |
| |
| ’T was Verdi’s tender chorus rose aloof,— | |
| That song the Lombards, there, dying with thirst, | |
| Send up to God,—“Lord, from the native roof,”— | |
| O’er countless thrilling hearts the song has burst, | |
| And here I, whom its magic put to proof, | 45 |
| Beginning to be no longer I, immersed | |
| Myself amidst those tallowy fellow-men | |
| As if they had been of my land and kin. | |
| |
| What would your Excellency? The piece was fine, | |
| And ours, and played, too, as it should be played: | 50 |
| It drives old grudges out when such divine | |
| Music as that mounts up into your head! | |
| But when the piece was done, back to my line | |
| I crept again, and there I should have stayed, | |
| But that just then, to give me another turn, | 55 |
| From those mole-mouths a hymn began to yearn: | |
| |
| A German anthem, that to heaven went | |
| On unseen wings, up from the holy fane: | |
| It was a prayer, and seemed like a lament, | |
| Of such a pensive, grave, pathetic strain | 60 |
| That in my soul it never shall be spent; | |
| And how such heavenly harmony in the brain | |
| Of those thick-skulled barbarians should dwell | |
| I must confess it passes me to tell. | |
| |
| In that sad hymn I felt the bitter-sweet | 65 |
| Of the songs heard in childhood, which the soul | |
| Learns from belovéd voices, to repeat | |
| To its own anguish in the days of dole: | |
| A thought of the dear mother, a regret, | |
| A longing for repose and love, the whole | 70 |
| Anguish of distant exile seemed to run | |
| Over my heart and leave it all undone: | |
| |
| When the strain ceased, it left me pondering | |
| Tenderer thoughts and stronger and more clear: | |
| These men, I mused, the selfsame despot king, | 75 |
| Who rules in Slavic and Italian fear, | |
| Tears from their homes and arms that round them cling, | |
| And drives them slaves thence, to keep us slaves here: | |
| From their familiar fields afar they pass | |
| Like herds to winter in some strange morass. | 80 |
| |
| To a hard life, to a hard discipline, | |
| Derided, solitary, dumb, they go: | |
| Blind instruments of many-eyed Rapine | |
| And purposes they share not and scarce know; | |
| And this fell hate that makes a gulf between | 85 |
| The Lombard and the German aids the foe | |
| Who tramples both divided, and whose bane | |
| Is in the love and brotherhood of men. | |
| |
| Poor souls! far off from all that they hold dear, | |
| And in a land that hates them! Who shall say | 90 |
| That at the bottom of their hearts they bear | |
| Love for our tyrant? I should like to lay | |
| They ’ve our hate for him in their pockets! Here, | |
| But that I turned in haste and broke away, | |
| I should have kissed a corporal stiff and tall, | 95 |
| And like a scarecrow stuck against the wall. | |
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