| |
| NO mortal hand hath struck the heroic string | |
| Since Milton’s lay in death across his breast, | |
| But shall the lyre then rest | |
| Along tired Cupid’s wing | |
| With vilest dust upon it? This of late | 5 |
| Hath been its fate. | |
| |
| But thou, O Sicily, art born agen. | |
| Far over chariot’s and Olympic steeds | |
| I see the heads and the stout arms of men, | |
| And will record (God give me power!) their deeds. | 10 |
| |
| Hail to thee first, Palermo! hail to thee | |
| Who callest with loud voice, “Arise! be free; | |
| Weak is the hand and rusty is the chain.” | |
| Thou callest; nor in vain. | |
| |
| Not only from the mountain rushes forth | 15 |
| The knighthood of the North, | |
| In whom my soul elate | |
| Owns now a race cognate, | |
| But even the couch of sloth mid painted walls | |
| Swells up, and men start forth from it, where calls | 20 |
| The voice of Honor, long, too long, unheard. | |
| |
| Not that the wretch was feared | |
| Who feared the meanest as he feared the best | |
| (A reed could break his rest), | |
| But that around all kings | 25 |
| Forever springs | |
| A wasting vapor that absorbs the fire | |
| Of all that would rise higher. | |
| |
| Even free nations will not let there be | |
| More nations free. | 30 |
| Witness (O shame!) our own | |
| Of eight years viler none, | |
| The second Charles found many and made more | |
| Base as himself: his reign is not yet o’er. | |
| |
| To gratify a brood | 35 |
| Swamp-fed amid the Suabian wood, | |
| The sons of Lusitania were cajoled, | |
| And bound, and sold, | |
| And sent in chains where we unchain the slave | |
| We die with thirst to save. | 40 |
| |
| Ye, too, Sicilians, ye too gave we up | |
| To drain the bitter cup | |
| Ye now dash from ye in the despot’s face, | |
| O glorious race, | |
| Which Hiero, Gelon, Pindar, sat among, | 45 |
| And praised for weaker deeds in deathless song; | |
| One is yet left to laud ye. Years have marred | |
| My voice, my prelude for some better bard, | |
| When such shall rise, and such your deeds create. | |
| |
| In the lone woods, and late, | 50 |
| Murmurs swell loud and louder, till at last | |
| So strong the blast | |
| That the whole forest, earth, and sea, and sky, | |
| To the loud surge reply. | |
| |
| Show, in the circle of six hundred years, | 55 |
| Show me a Bourbon on whose brow appears | |
| No brand of traitor. Prune the tree, | |
| From the same stock, forever will there be | |
| The same foul canker, the same bitter fruit. | |
| Strike, Sicily, uproot | 60 |
| The cursed upas. Never trust | |
| That race agen; down with it, dust to dust. | |
| |
