Page:Carducci - Poems of Italy.djvu/33

 Launched your last thunderbolt against the thrones, Given to the people your concordant laws— You should have come to live withdrawn, betwixt The ocean and the God of your belief.

Domestic shade, to-day Letitia haunts The empty house; not round her head there played The rays of Cæsar—betwixt church and tomb, Corsican mother, all her life was spent.

Her Son of Destiny with eagle eyes, Her daughters, fair as the resplendent dawn, And nephews all aglow with eager hopes,— All were laid low, all far away from her.

Corsica's Niobe, at night she stands There by the door whence from baptismal rites Her children issued forth, and her proud arms She stretches out over the savage sea,

And calls, and calls—if from the Western shore, If from Britannia, or the Land of Night No one of all her tragic-fated offspring, Wafted by death, is borne unto her bosom. 27