As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison) So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom's foison. IV In Pisa's church a cup of sculptured gold Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn At sacrament; more holy ne'er of old Etrurians mingled with the shades forlorn Of moon-illumined forests. V And reconciling factions wet their lips With that dread wine, and swear to keep each spirit Undarkened by their country's last eclipse. VI Was Florence the liberticide? that band A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted Of many impious faiths wise, just do they, Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants' prey? VII O 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. VIII 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, Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine A beast of subtler venom now doth make X 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 XI No record of his crime remains in story, Pursued into forgetfulness, which won XII For when by sound of trumpet was declared So much of water with him as might wet XIII Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast, Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear, XIV And in the roofless huts of vast morasses, All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses, XV He housed himself. There is a point of strand Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea. XVI Here the earth's breath is pestilence, and few The trophies of the clime's victorious strife- XVII stood there And at the utmost point The relics of a weed-inwoven cot, Thatched with broad flags. An outlawed murderer Had lived seven days there; the pursuit was hot When he was cold. The birds that were his grave Fell dead upon their feast in Vado's wave. XVIII There must have lived within Marenghi's heart That fire, more warm and bright than life or hope, (Which to the martyr makes his dungeon... More joyous than the heaven's majestic cope XIX Nor was his state so lone as you might think. Those ere the death-mist went abroad. And each one, with peculiar talk and play, XX And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night XXI He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed XXII And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken, While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshaken Of mountains and blue isles which did environ With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea, — And feel liberty. XXIII And in the moonless nights, when the dim ocean Heaved underneath the heaven, Starting from dreams. . . Communed with the immeasurable world; And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated, Till his mind grew like that it contemplated. |