There on the bastion stood he,
Brave Tyrol's gallant son.
They bade him then kneel down,
He answered, “I will not!
Here standing will I die,
As I have stood and fought,
As now I tread this bulwark's bank,
Long life to my good Kaiser Frank,
And, Tyrol, hail to thee!"
A grenadier then took
The bandage from his hand,
While Hofer spake a prayer
His last on earthly land.
"Mark well!" he with loud voice exclaimed,
"Now fire! Ah! 't was badly aimed!
O Tyrol, fare thee well!"
Julius Mosen. Tr. Alfred Baskerville.
THIS fragment refers to an event, told in Sismondi's Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province. The opening stanzas are addressed to the conquering city.
FOSTER-NURSE of man's abandoned glory Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendor, Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,
As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender:
The light-invested angel Poesy
Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.
And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught
By loftiest meditations; marble knew
The sculptor's fearless soul, and, as he wrought,
The grace of his own power and freedom grew.
And (more than all) heroic, just, sublime
Thou wert among the false, was this thy crime?
Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine
Of direst weeds hangs garlanded, the snake
Inhabits its wrecked palaces; in thine
A beast of subtler venom now doth make
Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,
And thus thy victim's fate is as thine own.
The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,
And love and freedom blossom but to wither;
And good and ill like vines entangled are,
So that their grapes may oft be plucked together;
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
Thy heart rejoice for dead Mazenghi's sake.
No record of his crime remains in story,
But if the morning bright as evening shone,
It was some high and holy deed, by glory
Pursued into forgetfulness, which won
From the blind crowd he made secure and free
The patriot's meed, toil, death, and infamy.
For when by sound of trumpet was declared
A price upon his life, and there was set
A penalty of blood on all who shared
So much of water with him as might wet
His lips, which speech divided not, — he went
Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.
Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold
Month after month endured; it was a feast
Whene'er he found those globes of deep red gold
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.
And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,
All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,
And where the huge and speckled aloe made,
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,
He housed himself. There is a point of strand
Near Vada's tower and town; and on one side
The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide;
And on the other creeps eternally,
Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea.
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
HERE are bright scenes beneath Italian skies, Where glowing suns their purest light diffuse, Uncultured flowers in wild profusion rise,
And Nature lavishes her warmest hues;
But trust thou not her smile, her balmy breath, -
Away! her charms are but the pomp of death!
He in the vine-clad bowers, unseen, is dwelling,
Where the cool shade its freshness round thee throws;
His voice, in every perfumed zephyr swelling,
With gentlest whisper lures thee to repose;
And the soft sounds that through the foliage sigh
But woo thee still to slumber and to die.
Mysterious danger lurks, a siren there,
Not robed in terrors, or announced in gloom,
But stealing o'er thee in the scented air,
And veiled in flowers, that smile to deck thy tomb;
How may we deem, amidst their deep array,
That heaven and earth but flatter to betray?
Sunshine and bloom and verdure! Can it be
That these but charm us with destructive wiles?
Where shall we turn, O Nature, if in thee
Danger is masked in beauty, death in smiles?
O, still the Circe of that fatal shore,
Where she, the Sun's bright daughter, dwelt of yore!
There, year by year, that secret peril spreads,
Disguised in loveliness, its baleful reign,
And viewless blights o'er many a landscape sheds,
Gay with the riches of the south, in vain;
O'er fairy bowers and palaces of state
Passing unseen, to leave them desolate.
And pillared halls, whose airy colonnades
Were formed to echo music's choral tone,
Are silent now, amidst deserted shades,
Peopled by sculpture's graceful forms alone;
And fountains dash unheard, by lone alcoves,
Neglected temples, and forsaken groves.
And there, where marble nymphs, in beauty gleaming,
Midst the deep shades of plane and cypress rise
By wave or grot might Fancy linger, dreaming
Of old Arcadia's woodland deities.
Wild visions! there no sylvan powers convene :
Death reigns the genius of the Elysian scene.
ION-HEARTS of young Italy!
Field where none died in vain!
Beardless boys and famine-gaunt
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