Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/179

173 And sigh for Italy with some safe sigh Cooped up in music 'twist an oh and ah,— Nay, hand in hand with that young child, will I Rather go singing "Bella libertà," Than, with those poets, croon the dead or cry "Se tu men bella fossi, Italia!"

"Less wretched if less fair," perhaps a truth Is so far plain in this—that Italy, Long trammelled with the purple of her youth Against her age's due activity, Sate still upon her graves, without the ruth Of death, but also without energy And hope of life. "What's Italy?" men ask: And others answer, "Virgil, Cicero, Catullus, Cæsar." And what more? to task The memory closer—"Why, Boccaccio, Dante, Petrarca,"— and if still the flask Appears to yield its wine by drops too slow,— "Angelo, Raffael, Pergolese,"—all Whose strong hearts beat through stone, or charged, again, Cloth-threads with fire of souls electrical, Or broke up heaven for music. What more then? Why, then, no more. The chaplet's last beads fall In naming the last saintship within ken, And, after that, none prayeth in the land. Alas, this Italy has too long swept Heroic ashes up for hour-glass sand; Of her own past, impassioned nympholept! Consenting to be nailed by the hand To the same bay-tree under which she stepped