LADY! if for the cold and cloudy clime Where was I born, but where I would not die, Of the great Poet-Sire of Italy
I dare to build the imitative rhyme, Harsh Runic copy of the South's sublime, THOU art the cause; and howsoever I Fall short of his immortal harmony, Thy gentle heart will pardon me the crime. Thou, in the pride of Beauty and of Youth, Spak'st; and for thee to speak and be obey'd Are one; but only in the sunny South Such sounds are utter'd, and such charms display'd, So sweet a language from so fair a mouth- Ah! to what effort would it not persuade ? Ravenna, June 21, 1819.
"On this hint I spake," and the result has been the following four cantos, in terza rima, now offered to the reader. If they are understood and approved, it is my purpose to continue the poem in various other cantos to its natural conclusion in the present age. The reader is requested to suppose that Dante addresses him in the interval between the conclusion of his Divina Commedia and his death, and shortly before the latter event, foretelling the fortunes of Italy in general in the ensuing centuries. In adopting this plan I have had in my mind the Cassandra of Lycophron, and the Prophecy of Nereus by Horace, as well as the Prophecies of Holy Writ. The measure adopted is the terza rima of Dante, which I am not aware to have seen hitherto tried in our language, except it may be by Mr. Hayley, of whose translation I never saw but one extract, quoted in the notes to Caliph Vathek; so that-if I do not err-this poem may be considered as a metrical experiment. The cantos are short, and about the same length of those of the poet whose name I have borrowed, and most probably taken in vain.
Among the inconveniences of authors in the IN the course of a visit to the city of Ravenna in present day, it is difficult for any who have a name, the summer of 1819, it was suggested to the author good or bad, to escape translation. I have had the that having composed something on the subject of fortune to see the fourth canto of Childe Harold Tasso's confinement, he should do the same on translated into Italian versi sciolti that is, a poem Dante's exile the tomb of the poet forming one of written in Spenserean stanza into blank verse, withhe principal objects of interest in that city, both to out regard to the natural divisions of the stanza, or the native sad to the strange". of the sense. If the present poem, being on
national topic should chance to undergo the same, fate, 1 would request the Italian reader to remember that when I have failed in the imitation of his great "Padre Alighier," I have failed in imitating that which all study and few understand, since to this very day it is not yet settled what was the meaning of the allegory in the first canto of the Inferno, unless Count Marchetti's ingenious and probable conjecture may be considered as having decided the question.
He may also pardon my failure the more, as I am not quite sure that he would be pleased with my success, since the Italians, with a pardonable nationality, are particularly jealous of all that is left them as a nation-their literature; and in the I present bitterness of the classic and romantic war, are but ill disposed to permit a foreigner even to approve or imitate them without finding fault with his ultramontane presumption. I can easily enter into all this, knowing what would be thought in England of an Italian imitator of Milton, or if a translation of Monti, or Pindemonte, or Arici, should be held up to the rising generation as a model for their future poetical essays. But I perceive that I am deviating into an address to the Italian reader, when my business is with the English one, and be they few or many, I must take my leave of both.
ONCE more in man's frail world! which I had left So long that 'twas forgotten; and I feel The weight of clay again,-too soon bereft Of the immortal vision which could heal
My earthly sorrows, and to God's own skies Lift me from that deep gulf without repeal, Where late my ears rung with the damned cries Of souls in hopeless bale; and from that place Of lesser torment, whence men may arise Pure from the fire to join the angelic race; Midst whom my own bright Beatrice bless'd My spirit with her light; and to the base Of the eternal Triad! first, last, best, Mysterious, three, sole, infinite, great God! Soul universal! led the mortal guest, Unblasted by the glory, though he trod
From star to star to reach the almighty throne. Oh Beatrice! whose sweet limbs the sod So long hath prest, and the cold marble stone, Thou sole pure seraph of my earliest love, Love so ineffable, and so alone, That nought on earth could more my bosom move, And meeting thee in heaven was but to meet That without which my soul, like the arkless dove, Had wander'd still in search of, nor her feet
Relieved her wing till found; without thy light My paradise had still been incomplete.2 Since my tenth sun gave summer to my sight Thou wert my life, the essence of my thought, Loved ere I knew the name of love, and bright Still in these dim old eyes, now overwrought With the world's war, and years, and banishment, And tears for thee, by other woes untaught; For mine is not a nature to be bent
By tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd; And though the long, long conflict hath been spent In vain, and never more, save when the cloud Which overhangs the Apennine, my mind's eye Pierces to fancy Florence, once so proud Of me, can I return, though but to die,
Unto my native soil, they have not yet Quench'd the old exile's spirit, stern and high But the sun, though not overcast, must set, And the night cometh; I am old in days, And deeds, and contemplation, and have met Destruction face to face in all his ways. The world hath left me, what it found me, pure, And if I have not gather'd yet its praise, sought it not by any baser lure;
Man wrongs, and Time avenges, and my name May form a monument not all obscure, Though such was not my ambition's end or aim, To add to the vain-glorious list of those Who dabble in the pettiness of fame, And make men's fickle breath the wind that blows Their sail, and deem it glory to be class'd With conquerors, and virtue's other foes, In bloody chronicles of ages past.
I would have had my Florence great and free;" Oh Florence! Florence! unto me thou wast Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He Wept over, "but thou would'st not; " as the bird Gathers its young, I would have gather'd thee Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard
My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce, Against the breast that cherished thee was stirr'd Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce, And doom this body forfeit to the fire. Alas! how bitter is his country's curse To him who for that country would expire, But did not merit to expire by her, And loves her, loves her even in her ire. The day may come when she will cease to err, The day may come she would be proud to have The dust she dooms to scatter, and transfer Of him whom she denied a home, the grave. But this shall not be granted; let my dust Lie where it falls; nor shall the soil which gave Me breath, but in her sudden fury thrust
Me forth to breathe elsewhere, so reassume My indignant bones, because her angry gust Forsooth is over, and repeal'd her doom;
No, she denied me what was mine-my roof, And shall not have, what is not hers-my tomb. Too long her armed wrath hath kept aloof
The breast which would have bled for her, the heart That beat, the mind that was temptation procf, The man who fought, toil'd, travelled, and each part Of a true citizen fulfill'd, and saw For his reward the Guelf's ascendant art Pass his destruction even into a law.
These things are not made for forgetfulness Florence shall be forgotten first; too raw The wound, too deep the wrong, and the distress Of such endurance too prolong'd to make My pardon greater, her injustice less, Though late repented; yet-yet for her sake I feel some fonder yearnings, and for thine My own Beatrice, I would hardly take Vengeance upon the land which once was mine, And still is hallow'd by thy dust's return, Which would protect the murderess like a shrine And save ten thousand foes by thy sole urn,
Though, like old Marius from Minturnæ's marsh | Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she,'
And Carthage ruins, my lone breast may burn At times with evil feelings hot and harsh,
And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foe Writhe in a dream before me, and o'erarch My brow with hopes of triumph,-let them go! Such are the last infirmities of those Who long have suffer'd more than mortal wo, And yet being mortal still, have no repose,
But on the pillow of Revenge-Revenge, Who sleeps to dream of blood, and waking glows With the oft-baffled, slakeless thirst of change, When we shall mount again, and they that trod Be trampled on, while Death and Até range O'er humbled heads and sever'd necks-Great God! Take these thoughts from me-to thy hands I yield My many wrongs, and thine almighty rod Will fall on those who smote me,-be my shield! As thou hast been in peril, and in pain, In turbulent cities, and the tented field- In toil, and many troubles borne in vain
For Florence,-I appeal from her to Thee! Thee, whom I late saw in thy loftiest reign, Even in that glorious vision, which to see
And live was never granted until now, And yet thou hast permitted this to me. Alas! with what a weight upon my brow
Their mother, the cold partner who hath brought Destruction for a dowry-this to see
And feel, and know without repair, hath taught A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free: I have not vilely found, nor basely sought, They made an exile-not a slave of me.
THE Spirit of the fervent days of Old, When words were things that came to pass, and thought
Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold Their children's children's doom already brought Forth from the abyss of time which is to be, The chaos of events, where lie half-wrought Shapes that must undergo mortality;
What the great Seers of Israel wore within, That spirit was on them, and is on me,
And if Cassandra-like, amidst the din
Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin
The only guerdon I have ever known.
The sense of earth and earthly things come back, Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed, Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low, The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack, Long day, and dreary night; the retrospect Of half a century bloody and black, And the frail few years I may yet expect Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear, For I have been too long and deeply wreck'd
On the lone rock of desolate Despair
To lift my eyes more to the passing sail Which shuns that reef so horrible and bare, Nor raise my voice-for who would heed my wail? I am not of this people, nor this age, And yet my harpings will unfold a tale Which shall preserve these times when not a page Of their perturbed annals could attract An eye to gaze upon their civil rage, Did not my verse embalm full many an act
Worthless as they who wrought it: 'tis the doom Of spirits of my order to be rack'd In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume Their days in endless strife, and die alone; Then future thousands crowd around their tomb, And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of him-who now is but a name, And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone, Spread his-by him unheard, unheeded-fame; And mine at least hath cost me dear: to die Is nothing, but to wither thus-to tame My mind down from its own infinity-
To live in narrow ways with little men, A common sight to every common eye, A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den, Ripp'd from all kindred, from all home, all things That make communion sweet, and softer pain- To feel me in the solitude of kings
Without the power that makes them bear a crown- To envy every dove his nest and wings Which waft him where the Apennine looks down On Arno, till he perches, it may be, Within my all inexorable town,
Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget In thine irreparable wrongs my own; We can have but one country, and even yet Thou'rt mine-my bones shall be within thy breast,
My soul within thy language, which once set With our old Roman sway in the wide West; But I will make another tongue arise As lofty and more sweet, in which exprest The hero's ardor, or the lover's sighs,
Shall find alike such sounds for every theme That every word, as brilliant as thy skies, Shall realize a poet's proudest dream,
And make thee Europe's nightingale of song; So that all present speech to thine shall seem The note of meaner birds, and every tongue Confess its barbarism, when compared with thine This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong, Thy Tuscan Bard, the banish'd Ghibelline. Wo! wo! the veil of coming centuries Is rent, a thousand years which yet supine Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise, Heaving in dark and sullen undulation, Float from eternity into these eyes;, The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station,
The unborn earthquake yet is in the womb, The bloody chaos yet expects creation, But all things are disposing for thy doom; The elements await but for the word,
"Let there be darkness!" and thou grow'st a
Yes! thou so beautiful, shall feel the sword, Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise, Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored; Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice? Thou, Italy! whose ever golden fields, Plough'd by the sunbeams solely, would suffice
For the world's granary; thou, whose sky heaven Of an invader? is it they, or ye,
With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue; Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer builds Her palace, in whose cradle Empire grew,
And form'd the Eternal City's ornaments From spoils of kings whom freemen overthrew; Birthplace of heroes, sanctuary of saints,
Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made Her home; thou, all which fondest fancy paints, And finds her prior vision but portray'd
In feeble colors, when the eye-from the Alp Of horrid snow, and rock, and shaggy shade Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp
Nods to the storm-dilates and dotes o'er thee, And wistfully implores, as 'twere, for help To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,
Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still
The more approach'd, and dearest were they free, Thou-Thou must wither to each tyrant's will; The Goth hath been,-the German, Frank and Hun
Are yet to come,-and on the imperial hill Ruin, already proud of the deeds done
By the old barbarians, there awaits the new, Throned on the Palatine, while lost and won Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue
Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter, Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue, And deepens into red the saffron water
Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest, And still more helpless nor less holy daughter, Vow'd to their God, have shrieking fled, and ceased Their ministry; the nations take their prey, Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they Are; these but gorge the flesh and lap the gore Of the departed, and then go their way; But those, the human savages, explore All paths of torture, and insatiate yet, With Ugolino hunger prowl for more.
Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set; The chiefless army of the dead, which late Beneath the traitor Prince's banner met, Hath left its leader's ashes at the gate; Had but the royal Rebel lived, perchance Thou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate. Oh! Rome, the spoiler or the spoil of France, From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance But Tiber shall become a mournful river.
Oh! when the strangers pass the Alps and Po, Crush them, ye rocks! floods whelm them, and for ever!
Why sleeps the idle avalanches so,
To topple on the lonely pilgrim's head? Why doth Eridanus but overflow The peasant's harvest from his turbid bed? Were not each barbarous horde a nobler prey? Over Cambyses' host the desert spread Her sandy ocean, and the sea waves' sway
Roll'd over Pharaoh and his thousands,-why Mountains and waters, do ye not as they? And you, ye men! Romans, who dare not die, Sons of the conquerors who overthrew
That to each host the mountain-gate unbar, And leave the march in peace, the passage free? Why, Nature's self detains the victor's car, And makes your land impregnable, if earth Could be so; but alone she will not war, Yet aids the warrior worthy of his birth In a soil where the mothers bring forth men : Not so with those whose souls are little worth For them no fortress can avail,—the den Of the poor reptile which preserves its sting Is more secure than walls of adamant, when The hearts of those within are quivering.
Are ye not brave? Yes, yet the Ausonian soil Hath hearts, and hands, and arms, and hosts to bring
Against Oppression; but how vain the toil, While still Division sows the seeds of wo And weakness, till the stranger reaps the spoil Oh! my own beauteous land! so long laid low, So long the grave of thy own children's hopes, When there is but required a single blow To break the chain, yet-yet the Avenger stops, And Doubt and Discord step 'twixt thine and thee, And join their strength to that which with thee copes;
What is there wanting then to set thee free, And show thy beauty in its fullest light? To make the Alps impassable; and we, Her sons, may do this with one deed-Unite.
FROM out the mass of never-dying ill,
The Plague, the Prince, the Stranger, and the
Vials of wrath but emptied to refill
And flow again, I cannot all record
That crowds on my prophetic eye: the earth And ocean written o'er would not afford Space for the annal, yet it shall go forth; Yes, all, though not by human pen, is graven, There where the farthest suns and stars have birth, Spread like a banner at the gate of heaven, The bloody scroll of our millennial wrongs Waves, and the echo of our groans is driven Athwart the sounds of archangelic songs, And Italy, the martyr'd nation's gore, Will not in vain arise to where belongs Omnipotence and mercy evermore:
Like to a harpstring stricken by the wind, The sound of her lament shall, rising o'er The seraph voices, touch the Almighty Mind. Meantime I, humblest of thy sons, and of Earth's dust by immortality refined
To sense and suffering, though the vain may scoff And tyrants threat, and meeker victims bow Before the storm because its breath is rough, To thee, my country! whom before, as now, I loved and love, devote the mournful lyre And melancholy gift high powers allow
Those who overthrew proud Xerxes, where yet lie To read the future; and if now my fire
The dead whose tomb Oblivion never knew,
Are the Alps weaker than Thermopyla? Their passes more alluring to the view
Is not as once it shone o'er thee, forgive! I but foretell thy fortunes-thon expire; Think not that I would look on them and live.
A spirit forces me to see and speak, And for my guerdon grants not to survive; My heart shall be pour'd over thee and break: Yet for a moment, ere I must resume Thy sable web of sorrow, let me take Over the gleams that flash athwart thy gloom
A softer glimpse; some stars shine through thy night,
And many meteors, and above thy tomb Leans sculptured Beauty, which Death cannot blight;
And from thine ashes boundless spirits rise To give thee honor, and the earth delight; Thy soil shall still be pregnant with the wise,
The gay, the learn'd, the generous, and the brave, Native to thee as summer to thy skies, Conquerors on foreign shores, and the far wave,7 Discoverers of new worlds, which take their name;s For thee alone they have no arm to save, And all thy recompense is in their fame,
A noble one to them, but not to thee- Shall they be glorious, and thou still the same? Oh! more than these illustrious far shall be
The being-and even yet he may be born- The mortal saviour who shall set thee free, And see thy diadem so changed and worn
By fresh barbarians, on thy brow replaced; And the sweet sun replenishing thy morn, Thy moral morn, too long with clouds defaced And noxious vapors from Avernus risen, Such as all they must breathe who are debased By servitude, and have the mind in prison.
Yet through this centuried eclipse of wo Some voices shall be heard, and earth shall listen; Poets shall follow in the path I show,
And make it broader; the same brilliant sky Which cheers the birds to song shall bid them glow,
And raise their notes as natural and high;
Tuneful shall be their numbers; they shall sing Many of love, and some of liberty, But few shall soar upon that eagle's wing,
And look in the sun's face with eagle's gaze, All free and fearless as the feather'd king, But fly more near the earth; how many a phrase Sublime shall lavish'd be on some small prince In all the prodigality of praise! And language, eloquently false, evince
The harlotry of genius, which, like beauty, Too oft forgets its own self-reverence, And looks on prostitution as a duty.
"He who once enters in a tyrant's hall As guest is slave, his thoughts become a booty, And the first day which sees the chain enthral A captive, sees his half of manhood gone-10 The soul's emasculation saddens all His spirit; thus the Bard too near the throne Quails from his inspiration, bound to please,- How servile is the task to please alone! To smooth the verse to suit his sovereign's ease And royal leisure, nor too much prolong Aught save his eulogy, and find, and seize, Or force, or forge fit argument of song? Thus trammell'd, thus condemn'd to Flattery's trebles,
He toils through all, still trembling to be wrong: For fear some noble thoughts, like heavenly rebels, Should rise up in high treason to his brain, He sings, as the Athenian spoke, with pebbles
|In's mouth, lest truth should stammer through his strain,
But out of the long file of sonneteers There shall be some who will not sing in vain, And he, their prince shall rank among my peers," And love shall be his torment; but his grief Shall make an immortality of tears,
And Italy shall hail him as the Chief Of poet-lovers, and his higher song
Of Freedom wreathe him with as green a leaf. But in a farther age shall rise along
The banks of Po two greater still than he; The world which smiled on him shall do taem
Till they are ashes, and repose with me.
The first will make an epoch with his lyre And fill the earth with feats of chivalry;
His fancy like a rainbow, and his fire,
Like that of Heaven, immortal, and his thought Borne onward with a wing that cannot tire: Pleasure shall, like a butterfly new caught,
Flutter her lovely pinions o'er his theme, And Art itself seem into Nature wrought By the transparency of his bright dream.- The second, of a tenderer, sadder mood, Shall pour his soul out o'er Jerusalem; He, too, shall sing of arms, and Christian blood Shed where Christ bled for man; and his high harp Shall, by the willow over Jordan's flood, Revive a song of Sion, and the sharp"
Conflict, and final triumph of the brave And pious, and the strife of hell to warp Their hearts from their great purpose, until wave The red-cross banners where the first red Cross Was crimson'd from his veins who died to save, Shall be his sacred argument; the loss
Of years, of favor, freedom, even of fame Contested for a time, while the smooth gloss Of courts would slide o'er his forgotten name, And call captivity a kindness, meant To shield him from insanity or shame, Such shall be his meet guerdon! who was sent To be Christ's Laureat-they reward him well! Florence dooms me but death or banishment, Ferrara him a pittance and a cell,
Harder to bear and less deserved, for I Had stung the factions which I strove to quell; But this meek man, who with a lover's eye Will look on earth and heaven, and who will deign To embalm with his celestial flattery, As poor a thing as e'er was spawn'd to reign, What will he do to merit such a doom? Perhaps he'll love,-and is not love in vain, Torture enough without a living tomb?
Yet it will be so-he and his compeer, The Bard of Chivalry, will both consume In penury and pain too many a year, And, dying in despondency, bequeath To the kind world, which scarce will yield a tear, A heritage enriching all who breathe
With the wealth of a genuine poet's soul, And to their country a redoubled wreath, Unmatch'd by time; not Hellas can unroll Through her olympiads such names, though one Of hers be mighty;-and is this the whole Of such men's destiny beneath the sun?
Must all the finer thoughts, the thrilling sense, The electric blood with which their arteries run, 'Their body's self-tuned soul with the intense
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