The hopeful child, with leaps to catch his growth, Sings open-eyed for liberty's sweet sake:

And I, a singer also from my youth,

Prefer to sing with these who are awake,

With birds, with babes, with men who will not fear The baptism of the holy morning dew,

(And many of such wakers now are here, Complete in their anointed manhood, who Will greatly dare and greatlier persevere,) Than join those old thin voices with my new, And sigh for Italy with some safe sigh Cooped up in music 'twixt an oh and ah,

Nay, hand in hand with that young child, will I Go singing rather, ' Bella libertà,'

Than, with those poets, croon the dead or cry 'Se tu men bella fossi, Italia!'

'Less wretched if less fair.' Perhaps a truth Is so far plain in this, that Italy,

Long trammelled with the purple of her youth Against her age's ripe activity,

Sits still upon her tombs, without death's ruth
But also without life's brave energy.

'Now tell us what is Italy ?' men ask :
And others answer, 'Virgil, Cicero,
Catullus, Cæsar.' What beside ? to task
The memory closer- Why, Boccaccio,
Dante, Petrarca,'-and if still the flask
Appears to yield its wine by drops too slow,-

'Angelo, Raffael, Pergolese,'-all

Whose strong hearts beat through stone, or charged again

The paints with fire of souls electrical,

Or broke up heaven for music. What more then? Why, then, no more. The chaplet's last beads fall In naming the last saintship within ken

And, after that, none prayeth in the land.
Alas, this Italy has too long swept

Heroic ashes up for hour-glass sand;
Of her own past, impassioned nympholept!
Consenting to be nailed here by the hand.
To the very bay-tree under which she stept

A queen of old, and plucked a leafy branch:
And, licensing the world too long indeed

To use her broad phylacteries to staunch
And stop her bloody lips, she takes no heed
How one clear word would draw an avalanche

Of living sons around her, to succeed

The vanished generations. Can she count These oil-eaters with large live mobile mouths Agape for maccaroni, in the amount

Of consecrated heroes of her south's

Bright rosary? The pitcher at the fount,
The gift of gods, being broken, she much loathes
To let the ground-leaves of the place confer
A natural bowl. So henceforth she would seem
No nation, but the poet's pensioner,

With alms from every land of song and dream,

While aye her pipers sadly pipe of her Until their proper breaths, in that extreme

Of sighing, split the reed on which they played: But never say 'no more'

Of which, no more.

To Italy's life! Her memories undismayed Still argue 'evermore;' her graves implore

Her future to be strong and not afraid; Her very statues send their looks before.

We do not serve the dead-the past is past.
God lives, and lifts His glorious mornings up
Before the eyes of men awake at last,
Who put away the meats they used to sup,
And down upon the dust of earth outcast
The dregs remaining of the ancient cup,

Then turn to wakeful prayer and worthy act.
The Dead, upon their awful 'vantage ground,

The sun not in their faces, shall abstract

No more our strength; we will not be discrowned As guardians of their crowns, nor deign transact

A barter of the present, for a sound

Of good so counted in the foregone days.

O Dead, ye shall no longer cling to us

With rigid hands of desiccating praise,

And drag us backward by the garment thus,

To stand and laud you in long-drawn virelays!

We will not henceforth be oblivious

Of our own lives, because ye lived before,

Nor of our acts, because ye acted well.

We thank

you that first unlatched the door,

ye

But will not make it inaccessible

By thankings on the threshold any more.

We hurry onward to extinguish hell

With our fresh souls, our younger hope, and God's Maturity of purpose. Soon shall we

Die also and, that then our periods.

Of life may round themselves to memory

As smoothly as on our graves the burial-sods,
We now must look to it to excel as ye,
And bear our age as far, unlimited
By the last mind-mark; so, to be invoked.
By future generations, as their Dead.

'Tis true that when the dust of death has choked A great man's voice, the common words he said Turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked

Like horses, draw like griffins: this is true And acceptable. I, too, should desire,

When men make record, with the flowers they strew, 'Savonarola's soul went out in fire

Upon our Grand-duke's piazza,* and burned through A moment first, or ere he did expire,

The veil betwixt the right and wrong, and showed How near God sate and judged the judges there,—'

* Savonarola was burnt for his testimony against papal corrup tions as early as March, 1498: and, as late as our own day, it has been a custom in Florence to strew with violets the pavement where he suffered, in grateful recognition of the anniversary.

Upon the self-same pavement overstrewed To cast my violets with as reverent care,

And prove that all the winters which have snowed Cannot snow out the scent from stones and air, Of a sincere man's virtues. This was he, Savonarola, who, while Peter sank

With his whole boat-load, called courageously 'Wake Christ, wake Christ!'-who, having tried the tank

Of old church-waters used for baptistry

Ere Luther came to spill them, swore they stank;
Who also by a princely deathbed cried,
'Loose Florence, or God will not loose thy soul !

Then fell back the Magnificent and died.
Beneath the star-look shooting from the cowl,

Which turned to wormwood-bitterness the wide Deep sea of his ambitions. It were foul

To grudge Savonarola and the rest

:

Their violets rather pay them quick and fresh!
The emphasis of death makes manifest

The eloquence of action in our flesh;

And men who, living, were but dimly guessed,
When once free from their life's entangled mesh,
Show their full length in graves, or oft indeed
Exaggerate their stature, in the flat,

To noble admirations which exceed
Most nobly, yet will calculate in that
But accurately. We, who are the seed.
Of buried creatures, if we turned and spat

2