With passionate looks, the gesture's whirling off
A hurricane of leaves! Three hours did end
While all these passed; and ever in the crowd,
Rude men, unconscious of the tears that kept
Their beards moist, shouted; and some laughed aloud,
And none asked any why they laughed and wept:
Friends kissed each other's cheeks, and foes long vowed
Did it more warmly; two-months' babies leapt
Right upward in their mother's arms, whose black
Wide, glittering eyes looked elsewhere; lovers pressed
Each before either, neither glancing back;
And peasant maidens, smoothly 'tired and tressed,
Forgot to finger on their throats the slack
Great pearl-strings; while old blind men would not rest,
But pattered with their staves and with their shoes
Still on the stones, and smiled as if they saw.
O Heaven! I think that day had noble use
Among God's days. So near stood Right and Law,
Both mutually forborne! Law would not bruise,
Nor Right deny; and each in reverent awe
Honoured the other. What if, ne'ertheless,
The sun did, that day, leave upon the vines
No charta, and the liberal Duke's excess
Did scarce exceed a Guelf's or Ghibelline's
In the specific actual righteousness
Of what that day he granted;[1] still the signs
- ↑ Since when the constitutional concessions have been complete in Tuscany, as all the world knows. The event breaks in upon the meditation, and is too fast for prophecy in these strange times.—E. B. B.
