Posthumous Poems/Ode to Mazzini
ODE TO MAZZINI
IA voice comes from the far unsleeping years, An echo from the rayless verge of time, Harsh, with the gathered weight of kingly crime, Whose soul is stained with blood and bloodlike tears, And hearts made hard and blind with endless pain, And eyes too dim to bear The light of the free air,And hands no longer restless in the wonted chain, And valiant lives worn out By silence and the doubtThat comes with hope found weaponless and vain; All these cry out to thee, As thou to Liberty,All, looking up to thee, take heart and life again.
IIToo long the world has waited. Year on year Has died in voiceless fear Since tyranny began the silent ill, And Slaughter satiates yet her ravenous will. Surely the time is near— The dawn grows wide and clear;And fiercer beams than pave the steps of day Pierce all the brightening air And in some nightly lairThe keen white lightning hungers for his prey, Against his chain the growing thunder yearns With hot swift pulses all the silence burns,And the earth hears, and maddens with delay.
IIIDost thou not hear, thro' the hushed heart of night, The voices wailing for thy help, thy sight, The souls, that call their lord? "We want the voice, the sword, We want the hand to strike, the love to share The weight we cannot bear; The soul to point our way, the heart to do and dare. We want the unblinded eye, The spirit pure and high, And consecrated by enduring care: For now we dare not meet The memories of the past; They wound us with their glories bright and fleet, The fame that would not last, The hopes that were too sweet; A voice of lamentation Shakes the high places of the thronèd nation, The crownless nation sitting wan and bare Upon the royal seat."
IV[1]Too long the world has waited. Day by day The noiseless feet of murder pass and stain Palace and prison, street and loveliest plain,And the slow life of freedom bleeds away. Still bleached in sun and rain, Lie the forgotten slain On bleak slopes of the dismal mountain-range. Still the wide eagle-wings Brood o'er the sleep of Kings, Whose purples shake notin the wind of change. Still our lost land is beautiful in vain, Where priests and kings defile with blood and lies The glory of the inviolable skies; Still from that loathsome lair Where crawls the sickening air, Heavy with poison, stagnant as despair, Where soul and body moulder in one chain Of inward-living painFrom wasted lives, and hopes proved unavailing; In utterance harsh and strange, With many a fitful change, In laughter and in tears, In triumph and in fears, The voice of earth goes heavenward for revenge: And all the children of her dying year Fill up the unbroken strains From priestly tongues that scathe with lies and vailing The Bourbons' murderous dotard, sick of blood, To the "How-long" of stricken spirits, wailing Before the throne of God.
VAustria! The voice is deepening in thine ears And art thou still asleep, Drunken with blood and tears! A murderer's rest should hardly be so deep Till comes the calm unbroken by the years, And those, whose life crawls on thro' dying shame, A thing made up of lies and fears, more vile Than aught that lives and bears a hateful name For the crowned serpent, skilled in many a wile, Charmed with the venomous honey of its guile The guards until they slept, And only fawned and crept Till Fortune gave it leave to sting and smile! Have not the winds of Heaven and the free waves A voice to bear the curses of thy slaves And the loud hatred of the world! O thou Upon whose shameless brow The crown is as a brand, The sceptre trembles in thy trothless hand, Shrinks not thy soul before the shame it braves, The gathered anger of a patient land, The loathing scorn that hardly bears to name thee? By all the lies that cannot shame thee, By all the memories thou must bear In hushed unspeakable despair; By the Past that follows thee, By the Future that shall be We curse thee by the freedom living still, We curse thee by the hopes thou canst not kill, We curse thee in the name of the wronged earth That gave thy treasons birth.
VI Out of a court alive with creeping things A stench has risen to thicken and pollute The inviolate air of heaven that clad of yore Our Italy with light, because these Kings Gather like wasps about the tainted fruit, And eat their venomous way into its core, And soil with hateful hands its golden hue; Till on the dead branch clings A festering horror blown with poison-dew; Then laugh "So Freedom loses her last name And Italy is shamèd with our shame!" For blindness holds them still And lust of craving will: A mist is on their souls who cannot see The ominous light, nor hear the fateful sounds; Who know not of the glory that shall be, And was, ere Austria loosed her winged hounds These double-beak'd and bloody-plumaged things, Whose shadow is the hiding-place of kings.
VIIBehold, even they whose shade is black around, Whose names make dumb the nations in their hate, Tremble to other tyrants; Naples bowsAghast, and Austria cowers like a scourged hound Before the priestly hunters: 'tis their fate, Whose fear is as a brand-mark on men's brows,Themselves to shrink beneath a fiercer dread; The might of ancient error Round royal spirits folds its shroud of terror,And at a name the imperial soul is dead.Rome! as from thee the primal curse came forth So comes the retribution:As the flushed murderers of the ravening north Crouch for thine absolution.Exalt thyself, that love or fear of thee Hath shamed thine Austrian bondsmen, and their shame.Avenges the vext spirits of the free, Repays the trustless lips, the bloody hands, And all the sin that makes the Austrian nameA bye-word among liars—fit to be Thy herald, Rome, among the wasted lands!
VIIIFor wheresoe'er thou lookest, death is there,And a slow curse that stains the sacred air: Such as must hound Italia till she learn Whereon to lean the weight of reverent trust Learn to see God within her, and not bare Her glories to the ravenous eyes of lust; Vain of dishonour that proclaims her fair. Such insolence of listless pride must earn The scourge of Austria—till mischance in turn Defile her eagles with fresh blood and dust. For tho' the faint heart burn In silence: yet a sullen flame is there Which yet may leap into the sunless air And gather in the embrace of its wide wings The shining spoil of kings.
IX But now the curse lies heavy. Where art thou, Our Italy, among all these laid low Too powerless or too desperate to speak—Thou, robed in purple for a priestly show, Thou, buffeted and stricken, blind and weak!Doth not remembrance light thine utter woe?Thine eyes beyond this Calvary look, altho' Brute-handed Austria smite thee on the cheek And her thorns pierce thy forehead, white and meek;In lurid mist half-strangled sunbeams pine, Yet purer than the flame of tainted altars; And tho' thy weak hope falters,It clings not to the desecrated shrine. Tho' thy blank eyes look wanly thro' dull tears, And thy weak soul is heavy with blind fears, Yet art thou greater than thy sorrow is, Yet is thy spirit nobler than of yore,Knowing the keys thy reverence used to kiss Were forged for emperors to bow down before,Not for free men to worship: So that Faith,Blind portress of the gate which opens death, Shall never prate of Freedom any more;For on a priest's tongue such a word is strange, And when they laud who did but now revile, Shall we believe? Rome's lying lips defileThe graves of heroes, giving us in change Enough of Saints and Bourbons, Dare ye nowReceive her who speaks pleasant words and blandAnd stretches out the blessing of her hand While the pure blood of freemen stains her brow?O dream not of such reconcilement! Be At least in spirit freeWhen the great sunrise floods your glorious land.
X For yet the dawn is lingering white and far, And dim its guiding star;There is a sorrow in the speechless air,And in the sunlight a dull painful glare; The winds, that fold around That soft enchanted groundTheir wings of music, sadden into song; The holy stars await Some dawn of glimmering fateIn silence—but the time of pain seems long, But here no comfort stillsThis sorrow that o'erclouds the purple hills.
XIThe sun is bright, and fair the foamless sea;The winds are loud with light and liberty: But when shall these be free?These hearts that beat thro' stifled pain, these eyesStrained thro' dim prison-air toward the free skies: When shall their light arise?
XII Thou! whose best name on earth Is Love—whose fairest birth The freedom of the fair world thou hast made; Whose light in Heaven is life, Whose rest above our strife—Whose bright sky overvaults earth's barren shade;Who hearest all ere this weak prayer can rise, Before whose viewless eyesUnrolled and far the starry future lies; Behold what men have done, What is beneath thy sun—What stains the sceptred hand, sin lifts to thee In prayer-like mockery—What binds the heart Thou madest to be free. Since we are blind, give light— Since we are feeble, smite—How long shall man be scornful in thy sight,"Fear not—He cares not, or He does not see?"
XIII We keep our trust tho' all things fail us— Tho' Time nor baffled Hope avail us,We keep our faith—God liveth and is love. Not one groan rises there Tho' choked in dungeon airBut He has heard it though no thunders move— And though no help is here, No royal oath, no Austrian lie, But echoes in the listening sky; We know not, yet perchance His wide reply is near. Ah, let no sloth delay, No discord mar its way, Keep wide the entrance for that Hope divine; Truth never wanted swords, Since with his swordlike words Savonarola smote the Florentine. Even here she is not weaponless, but waits Silent at the palace gates, Her wide eyes kindling eastward to the far sunshine. When out of Naples came a tortured voice: Whereat the whole earth shuddered, and forbade The murderous smile on lying lips to fade; The murderous heart in silence to rejoice; She also smiled—no royal smile—as knowing Some stains of sloth washed by the blood then flowing; Their lives went out in darkness—not in vain; Earth cannot hear, and sink to bloodless rest again. And if indeed her waking strength shall prove Worthy the dreams that passing lit her sleep, Who then shall lift such eyes of triumph, who Respond with echoes of a louder love Than Cromwell's England? let fresh praise renew The wan brow's withered laurels with its dew, And one triumphal peace the crownèd earth shall keep.
XIVAs one who dreaming on some cloud-white peak Hears the loud wind sail past him far and free, And the faint music of the misty sea,Listening till all his life reels blind and weak; So discrownèd Italy With the world's hope in her hands Ever yearning to get free, Silent between the past and future stands. Dim grows the past, and dull, All that was beautiful, As scattered stars drawn down the moonless night: And the blind eyes of Scorn Are smitten by strange morn, And many-thronèd treason wastes before its might: And every sunless cave And time-forgotten grave Is pierced with one intolerable light. Not one can Falsehood save Of all the crowns she gave, But the dead years renew their old delight. The worshipped evil wanes Through all its godless fanes,And falters from its long imperial height, As the last altar-flame Dies with a glorious nation's dying shame.
XVAnd when that final triumph-time shall be, Whose memory shall be kept First of the souls that sleptIn death ere light was on their Italy? Or which of men more dear than thee To equal-thoughted liberty,Whom here on earth such reverence meets.Such love from Heaven's pure children greets As few dare win among the free! Such honour ever follows theeIn peril, banishment, and blame,And all the loud blind world calls shame,Lives, and shall live, thy glorious name,Tho' death, that scorns the robèd slave,Embrace thee, and a chainless grave. While thou livest, there is one Free in soul beneath the sun:And thine out-laboured heart shall beIn death more honoured—not more free.
XVIAnd men despond around thee; and thy name The tyrant smiles at, and his priests look pale;And weariness of empty-throated fame,And men who live and fear all things but shame, Comes on thee; and the weight of aimless years Whose light is dim with tears: And hope dies out like a forgotten tale.O brother, crownèd among men—O chief In glory as in grief!O throned by sorrow over time and fate And the blind strength of hate!From soul to answering soul The thunder-echoes roll,And truth grows out of suffering still and great.To have done well is victory,—to be trueIs truest guerdon, though blind hands undo The work begun too late.God gives to each man power by toil to earn An undishonoured grave:The praise that lives on every name in turn He leaves the laurelled slave.We die, but freedom dies not like the powerThat changes with the many-sided hour.Though trampled under the brute hoofs of crime, She sees thro' tears and blood,Above the stars and in the night of time, The sleepless watch of God;Past fear and pain and errors wide and strangeThe veil'd years leading wingless-footed Change; Endure, and they shall giveTruth and the law whereby men work and live.
XVIIFrom Ischia to the loneliest Apennine Time's awful voice is blown; And from her clouded throneFreedom looks out and knows herself divine. From walls that keep in shame Poerio's martyr-name,From wild rocks foul with children's blood, it rings; Their murderers gaze aghast Through all the hideous past,And fate is heavy on the souls of kings. No more their hateful sway Pollutes the equal day,Nor stricken truth pales under its wide wings,Even when the awakened people speaks in wrath, Wrong shall not answer wrong with blind impatience;The bloody slime upon that royal path Makes slippery standing for the feet of nations. Our freedom's bridal robe no wrong shall stain, No lie shall taint her speech:But equal knowledge shall be born of pain, And wisdom shaping each.True leaders shall be with us, nobler lawsShall guide us calmly to the final Cause: And thou, earth's crownless queen, No more shalt wail unseen,But front the weary ages without pain: Time shall bring back for thee The hopes that lead the free,And thy name fill the charmed world again. The shame that stains thy browShall not for ever mark thee to fresh fears:For in the far light of the buried years Shines the undarkened future that shall be A dawn o'er sunless ages. Hearest thou,Italia? tho' deaf sloth hath sealed thine ears,The world has heard thy children—and God hears.
- ↑ In the MS., Stanza IV originally began as follows—Swinburne evidently cancelled these lines, as being too violent to represent anything that was happening in 1857."Too long the world has waited. Day by day Fresh murders ease the thirst of widening sway: And still their blood who lie without a shroud Left to the wild bleak air, As they were slaughter'd there, Cries from the desolate Apennine aloud. Father and children lain A white bleak pile of slain, Left to the sunlight and the freezing rain. Thro' blood-polluted halls Still the king-serpent sprawls His shiny way athwart the floors defiled; From that foul nest of sin His soul sits cowering in Still creeps and stings his anger blind and wild. Still from that loathsome lair," etc.