Can any sit down idle in the house
Nor hear appeals from Buonarroti's stone

And Raffael's canvas, rousing and to rouse ?
Where's Poussin's master? Gallic Avignon
Bred Laura, and Vaucluse's fount has stirred
The heart of France too strongly, as it lets

Its little stream out, (like a wizard's bird Which bounds upon its emerald wing and wets The rocks on each side) that she should not gird Her loins with Charlemagne's sword when foes beset The country of her Petrarch. Spain may well

Be minded how from Italy she caught,

To mingle with her tinkling Moorish bell,
A fuller cadence and a subtler thought..

And even the New World, the receptacle
Of freemen, may send glad men, as it ought,
To greet Vespucci Amerigo's door.
While England claims, by trump of poetry,
Verona, Venice, the Ravenna-shore,
And dearer holds John Milton's Fiesole

Than Langlande's Malvern with the stars in flower.

And Vallombrosa, we two went to see

Last June, beloved companion,-—where sublime The mountains live in holy families,

And the slow pinewoods ever climb and climb Half up their breasts, just stagger as they seize Some grey crag, drop back with it many a time, And straggle blindly down the precipice.

The Vallombrosan brooks were strewn as thick That June-day, knee-deep with dead beechen leaves, As Milton saw them ere his heart grew sick And his eyes blind. I think the monks and beeves Are all the same too: scarce have they changed the wick

On good St. Gualbert's altar which receives

The convent's pilgrims; and the pool in front (Wherein the hill-stream trout are cast, to wait The beatific vision and the grunt

Used at refectory) keeps its weedy state,
To baffle saintly abbots who would count
The fish across their breviary nor 'bate

The measure of their steps. O waterfalls
And forests! sound and silence! mountains bare
That leap up peak by peak and catch the palls
Of purple and silver mist to rend and share
With one another, at electric calls

Of life in the sunbeams,-till we cannot dare

Fix your shapes, count your number! we must

think

Your beauty and your glory helped to fill

The cup of Milton's soul so to the brink,
He never more was thirsty when God's will
Had shattered to his sense the last chain-link
By which he had drawn from Nature's visible
The fresh well-water. Satisfied by this,
He sang of Adam's paradise and smiled,
Remembering Vallombrosa. Therefore is

The place divine to English man and child,
And pilgrims leave their souls here in a kiss.

For Italy's the whole earth's treasury, piled
With reveries of gentle ladies, flung

Aside, like ravelled silk, from life's worn stuff;
With coins of scholars' fancy, which, being rung
On work-day counter, still sound silver-proof;

In short, with all the dreams of dreamers young, Before their heads have time for slipping off

Hope's pillow to the ground. How oft, indeed, We've sent our souls out from the rigid north, On bare white feet which would not print nor bleed, To climb the Alpine passes and look forth,

Where booming low the Lombard rivers lead. To gardens, vineyards, all a dream is worth,— Sights, thou and I, Love, have seen afterward From Tuscan Bellosguardo, wide awake,*

When, standing on the actual blessed sward
Where Galileo stood at nights to take

The vision of the stars, we have found it hard,
Gazing upon the earth and heaven, to make
A choice of beauty.

Therefore let us all

Refreshed in England or in other land,

By visions, with their fountain-rise and fall,

* Galileo's villa, close to Florence, is built on an eminence called Bellosguardo.

Of this earth's darling,—we, who understand
A little how the Tuscan musical

Vowels do round themselves as if they planned
Eternities of separate sweetness, — we,
Who loved Sorrento vines in picture-book,

Or ere in wine-cup we pledged faith or glee,-
Who loved Rome's wolf with demi-gods at suck,
Or ere we loved truth's own divinity,—
Who loved, in brief, the classic hill and brook,

And Ovid's dreaming tales and Petrarch's song, Or ere we loved Love's self even,—let us give

The blessing of our souls, (and wish them strong To bear it to the height where prayers arrive,

When faithful spirits pray against a wrong,) To this great cause of southern men who strive

In God's name for man's rights, and shall not fail!

Behold, they shall not fail. The shouts ascend
Above the shrieks, in Naples, and prevail.

Rows of shot corpses, waiting for the end
Of burial, seem to smile up straight and pale
Into the azure air and apprehend

That final gun-flash from Palermo's coast
Which lightens their apocalypse of death.

So let them die! The world shows nothing lost; Therefore, not blood. Above or underneath, What matter, brothers, if ye keep your post On duty's side? As sword returns to sheath, So dust to grave, but souls find place in Heaven.

Heroic daring is the true success,

The eucharistic bread requires no leaven;

And though your ends were hopeless, we should bless Your cause as holy. Strive-and, having striven, Take, for God's recompense, that righteousness!

PART II.

I WROTE a meditation and a dream,
Hearing a little child sing in the street:

heart's full beat

I leant upon his music as a theme,
Till it gave way beneath my
Which tried at an exultant prophecy

But dropped before the measure was completeAlas, 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,