Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79. | | | | Brescia | | The Patriot | | Robert Browning (1812–1889) |
| | | IT was roses, roses, all the way, | |
| With myrtle mixed in my path like mad. | |
| The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, | |
| The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, | |
| A year ago on this very day! | 5 |
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| The air broke into a mist with bells, | |
| The old walls rooked with the crowds and cries. | |
| Had I said, “Good folks, mere noise repels, | |
| But give me your sun from yonder skies!” | |
| They had answered, “And afterward, what else?” | 10 |
| |
| Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun, | |
| To give it my loving friends to keep. | |
| Naught man could do have I left undone, | |
| And you see my harvest, what I reap | |
| This very day, now a year is run. | 15 |
| |
| There ’s nobody on the house-tops now,— | |
| Just a palsied few at the windows set,— | |
| For the best of the sight is, all allow, | |
| At the Shambles’ Gate,—or, better yet, | |
| By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow. | 20 |
| |
| I go in the rain, and, more than needs, | |
| A rope cuts both my wrists behind, | |
| And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, | |
| For they fling, whoever has a mind, | |
| Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds. | 25 |
| |
| Thus I entered Brescia, and thus I go! | |
| In such triumphs people have dropped down dead. | |
| “Thou, paid by the world,—what dost thou owe | |
| Me?” God might have questioned; but now instead | |
| ’T is God shall requite! I am safer so. | 30 | | | |
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