Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/217

 Heavens! had the death-piles of the ancient years Flared up in vain before me? Knew I not What stench arises from their purple gears, And how the sceptres witness whence they got Their briar-wood, crackling through the atmosphere's Foul smoke, by princely perjuries, kept hot? Forgive me, ghosts of patriots,—Brutus, thou, Who trailest downhill into life again Thy blood-weighed cloak, to indict me with thy slow Reproachful eyes!—for being taught in vain That while the illegitimate Cæsars show Of meaner stature than the first full strain, (Confessed incompetent to conquer Gaul) They swoon as feebly and cross Rubicons As rashly as any Julius of them all. Forgive, that I forgot the mind that runs Through absolute races, too unsceptical! I saw the man among his little sons, His lips warm with their kisses while he swore, And I, because I am a woman, I, Who felt my own child's coming life before The prescience of my soul, and held faith high, I could not bear to think, whoever bore, That lips, so warmed, could shape so cold a lie.

From Casa Guidi windows I looked out, Again looked, and beheld a different sight. The Duke had fled before the people's shout "Long live the Duke!" A people, to speak right, Should speak as soft as courtiers, lest a doubt Turn gracious sovereign brows to curdled white.