His South, too, has learnt something certainly,
Whereof the practice will bring profit soon;
And peradventure other eyes may see,
From Casa Guidi windows, what is done
Or undone. Whatsoever deeds they be,
Pope Pius will be glorified in none.
XVII.
Some heights of sorrow. Peter's rock, so named,
Shall lure no vessel, any more, to drop
Among the breakers. Peter's chair is shamed
Like any vulgar throne the nations lop
To pieces for their firewood unreclaimed;
And, when it burns too, we shall see as well
In Italy as elsewhere. Let it burn.
The cross, accounted still adorable,
Is Christ's cross only !—if the thief's would earn
Some stealthy genuflexions, we rebel ;
And here the impenitent thief's has had its turn,
As God knows; and the people on their knees
Scoff and toss back the croziers, stretched like yokes
To press their heads down lower by degrees.
So Italy, by means of these last strokes,
Escapes the danger which preceded these,
Of leaving captured hands in cloven oaks . . .
Of leaving very souls within the buckle
Whence bodies struggled outward . . . of supposing
That freemen may like bondsmen kneel and truckle,
And then stand up as usual, without losing
An inch of stature.
Those whom she-wolves suckle
Will bite as wolves do, in the grapple-closing
