No More Learning

I.

Florence, Bologna, Parma, Modena:
When you named them a year ago,
So many graves reserved by God, in a
Day of Judgment, you seemed to know,
To open and let out the resurrection.

II.

And meantime (you made your reflection
If you were English), was nought to be done
But sorting sables, in predilection
For all those martyrs dead and gone,
Till the new earth and heaven made ready.

III.

And if your politics were not heady,
Violent, . . . "Good," you added, "good
In all things! Mourn on sure and steady.
Churchyard thistles are wholesome food
For our European wandering asses.

IV.

"The date of the resurrection passes
Human foreknowledge: men unborn
Will gain by it (even in the lower classes),
But none of these. It is not the morn
Because the cock of France is crowing.

V.
"Cocks crow at midnight, seldom knowing
Starlight from dawn-light! 't is a mad
Poor creature. " Here you paused, and growing
Scornful,--suddenly, let us add,
The trumpet sounded, the graves were open.

VI.

Life and life and life! agrope in
The dusk of death, warm hands, stretched out
For swords, proved more life still to hope in,
Beyond and behind. Arise with a shout,
Nation of Italy, slain and buried!

VII.

Hill to hill and turret to turret
Flashing the tricolor,--newly created
Beautiful Italy, calm, unhurried,
Rise heroic and renovated,
Rise to the final restitution.

VIII.

Rise; prefigure the grand solution
Of earth's municipal, insular schisms,--
Statesmen draping self-love's conclusion
In cheap vernacular patriotisms,
Unable to give up Judaea for Jesus.

IX.

Bring us the higher example; release us
Into the larger coming time:
And into Christ's broad garment piece us
Rags of virtue as poor as crime,
National selfishness, civic vaunting.

X.

No more Jew nor Greek then,--taunting
Nor taunted;--no more England nor France!
But one confederate brotherhood planting
One flag only, to mark the advance,
Onward and upward, of all humanity.