Why swear at all, thou false Duke
Leopold?
Elizabeth Browning
Something less
than a grave!
[10] In allusion to Mr. Kirkup's discovery of Giotto's fresco portrait
of Dante.
[11] Galileo's villa, close to Florence, is built on an eminence
called Bellosguardo.
PART II.
I wrote a meditation and a dream,
Hearing a little child sing in the street:
I leant upon his music as a theme,
Till it gave way beneath my heart's full beat
Which tried at an exultant prophecy
But dropped before the measure was complete--
Alas, for songs and hearts! O Tuscany,
O Dante's Florence, is the type too plain?
Didst thou, too, only sing of liberty
As little children take up a high strain
With unintentioned voices, and break off
To sleep upon their mothers' knees again?
Couldst thou not watch one hour? then, sleep enough--
That sleep may hasten manhood and sustain
The faint pale spirit with some muscular stuff.
But we, who cannot slumber as thou dost,
We thinkers, who have thought for thee and failed,
We hopers, who have hoped for thee and lost,
We poets, wandered round by dreams,[12] who hailed
From this Atrides' roof (with lintel-post
Which still drips blood,--the worse part hath prevailed)
The fire-voice of the beacons to declare
Troy taken, sorrow ended,--cozened through
A crimson sunset in a misty air,
What now remains for such as we, to do?
God's judgments, peradventure, will He bare
To the roots of thunder, if we kneel and sue?
From Casa Guidi windows I looked forth,
And saw ten thousand eyes of Florentines
Flash back the triumph of the Lombard north,--
Saw fifty banners, freighted with the signs
And exultations of the awakened earth,
Float on above the multitude in lines,
Straight to the Pitti. So, the vision went.
And so, between those populous rough hands
Raised in the sun, Duke Leopold outleant,
And took the patriot's oath which henceforth stands
Among the oaths of perjurers, eminent
To catch the lightnings ripened for these lands.
Why swear at all, thou false Duke Leopold?
What need to swear? What need to boast thy blood
Unspoilt of Austria, and thy heart unsold
Away from Florence? It was understood
God made thee not too vigorous or too bold;
And men had patience with thy quiet mood,
And women, pity, as they saw thee pace
Their festive streets with premature grey hairs.
We turned the mild dejection of thy face
To princely meanings, took thy wrinkling cares
For ruffling hopes, and called thee weak, not base.
Nay, better light the torches for more prayers
And smoke the pale Madonnas at the shrine,
Being still "our poor Grand-duke, our good Grand-duke,
Who cannot help the Austrian in his line,"--
Than write an oath upon a nation's book
For men to spit at with scorn's blurring brine!
Who dares forgive what none can overlook?
For me, I do repent me in this dust
Of towns and temples which makes Italy,--
I sigh amid the sighs which breathe a gust
Of dying century to century
Around us on the uneven crater-crust
Of these old worlds,--I bow my soul and knee.
Absolve me, patriots, of my woman's fault
That ever I believed the man was true!
These sceptred strangers shun the common salt,
And, therefore, when the general board's in view
And they stand up to carve for blind and halt,
The wise suspect the viands which ensue.
I much repent that, in this time and place
Where many corpse-lights of experience burn
From Caesar's and Lorenzo's festering race,
To enlighten groping reasoners, I could learn
No better counsel for a simple case
Than to put faith in princes, in my turn.
Had all the death-piles of the ancient years
Flared up in vain before me? knew I not
What stench arises from some purple gears?
And how the sceptres witness whence they got
Their briar-wood, crackling through the atmosphere's
Foul smoke, by princely perjuries, kept hot?
Forgive me, ghosts of patriots,--Brutus, thou,
Who trailest downhill into life again
Thy blood-weighed cloak, to indict me with thy slow
Reproachful eyes! --for being taught in vain
That, while the illegitimate Caesars show
Of meaner stature than the first full strain
(Confessed incompetent to conquer Gaul),
They swoon as feebly and cross Rubicons
As rashly as any Julius of them all!
than a grave!
[10] In allusion to Mr. Kirkup's discovery of Giotto's fresco portrait
of Dante.
[11] Galileo's villa, close to Florence, is built on an eminence
called Bellosguardo.
PART II.
I wrote a meditation and a dream,
Hearing a little child sing in the street:
I leant upon his music as a theme,
Till it gave way beneath my heart's full beat
Which tried at an exultant prophecy
But dropped before the measure was complete--
Alas, for songs and hearts! O Tuscany,
O Dante's Florence, is the type too plain?
Didst thou, too, only sing of liberty
As little children take up a high strain
With unintentioned voices, and break off
To sleep upon their mothers' knees again?
Couldst thou not watch one hour? then, sleep enough--
That sleep may hasten manhood and sustain
The faint pale spirit with some muscular stuff.
But we, who cannot slumber as thou dost,
We thinkers, who have thought for thee and failed,
We hopers, who have hoped for thee and lost,
We poets, wandered round by dreams,[12] who hailed
From this Atrides' roof (with lintel-post
Which still drips blood,--the worse part hath prevailed)
The fire-voice of the beacons to declare
Troy taken, sorrow ended,--cozened through
A crimson sunset in a misty air,
What now remains for such as we, to do?
God's judgments, peradventure, will He bare
To the roots of thunder, if we kneel and sue?
From Casa Guidi windows I looked forth,
And saw ten thousand eyes of Florentines
Flash back the triumph of the Lombard north,--
Saw fifty banners, freighted with the signs
And exultations of the awakened earth,
Float on above the multitude in lines,
Straight to the Pitti. So, the vision went.
And so, between those populous rough hands
Raised in the sun, Duke Leopold outleant,
And took the patriot's oath which henceforth stands
Among the oaths of perjurers, eminent
To catch the lightnings ripened for these lands.
Why swear at all, thou false Duke Leopold?
What need to swear? What need to boast thy blood
Unspoilt of Austria, and thy heart unsold
Away from Florence? It was understood
God made thee not too vigorous or too bold;
And men had patience with thy quiet mood,
And women, pity, as they saw thee pace
Their festive streets with premature grey hairs.
We turned the mild dejection of thy face
To princely meanings, took thy wrinkling cares
For ruffling hopes, and called thee weak, not base.
Nay, better light the torches for more prayers
And smoke the pale Madonnas at the shrine,
Being still "our poor Grand-duke, our good Grand-duke,
Who cannot help the Austrian in his line,"--
Than write an oath upon a nation's book
For men to spit at with scorn's blurring brine!
Who dares forgive what none can overlook?
For me, I do repent me in this dust
Of towns and temples which makes Italy,--
I sigh amid the sighs which breathe a gust
Of dying century to century
Around us on the uneven crater-crust
Of these old worlds,--I bow my soul and knee.
Absolve me, patriots, of my woman's fault
That ever I believed the man was true!
These sceptred strangers shun the common salt,
And, therefore, when the general board's in view
And they stand up to carve for blind and halt,
The wise suspect the viands which ensue.
I much repent that, in this time and place
Where many corpse-lights of experience burn
From Caesar's and Lorenzo's festering race,
To enlighten groping reasoners, I could learn
No better counsel for a simple case
Than to put faith in princes, in my turn.
Had all the death-piles of the ancient years
Flared up in vain before me? knew I not
What stench arises from some purple gears?
And how the sceptres witness whence they got
Their briar-wood, crackling through the atmosphere's
Foul smoke, by princely perjuries, kept hot?
Forgive me, ghosts of patriots,--Brutus, thou,
Who trailest downhill into life again
Thy blood-weighed cloak, to indict me with thy slow
Reproachful eyes! --for being taught in vain
That, while the illegitimate Caesars show
Of meaner stature than the first full strain
(Confessed incompetent to conquer Gaul),
They swoon as feebly and cross Rubicons
As rashly as any Julius of them all!
