Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/202

196 For only light; from eucharistic bowls Will pour new life for nations that expire, And rend the scarlet of his Papal vest To gird the weak loins of his countrymen— I hold that man surpasses all the rest Of Romans, heroes, patriots,—and that when He sat down on the throne, he dispossessed The first graves of some glory. See again, This country-saving is a glorious thing! Why, say a common man achieved it? Well! Say, a rich man did? Excellent! A king? That grows sublime! A priest? Improbable! A Pope? Ah, there we stop and cannot bring Our faith up to the leap, with history's bell So heavy round the neck of it—albeit We fain would grant the possibility For thy sake, Pio Nono!

Stretch thy feet In that case—I will kiss them reverently As any pilgrim to the Papal seat! And, such proved possible, thy throne to me Shall seem as holy a place as Pellico's Venetian dungeon; or as Spielberg's grate, Where the fair Lombard woman hung the rose Of her sweet soul, by its own dewy weight, (Because her sun shone inside to the close!) And pining so, died early, yet too late For what she suffered! Yea, I will not choose Betwixt thy throne, Pope Pius, and the spot Marked red for ever spite of rains and dews, Where two fell riddled by the Austrian's shot The brothers Bandiera, who accuse,