Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/226

 Once fixed for judgment: 'tis as hard to change The people's, when they rise beneath their loads And heave them from their backs with violent wrench, To crush the oppressor. For that judgment rod's The measure of this popular revenge.

Meantime, from Casa Guidi windows we Beheld the armament of Austria flow Into the drowning heart of Tuscany. And yet none wept, none cursed; or, if 'twas so, They wept and cursed in silence. Silently Our noisy Tuscans watched the invading foe; They had learnt silence. Pressed against the wall And grouped upon the church-steps opposite, A few pale men and women stared at all. God knows what they were feeling, with their white Constrained faces!—they, so prodigal Of cry and gesture when the world goes right, Or wrong indeed. But here, was depth of wrong, And here, still water: they were silent here: And through that sentient silence, struck along That measured tramp from which it stood out clear, Distinct the sound and silence, like a gong Tolled upon midnight,-each made awfuller; While every soldier in his cap displayed A leaf of olive. Dusty, bitter thing! Was such plucked at Novara, is it said?

A cry is up in England, which doth ring The hollow world through, that for ends of trade And virtue, and God's better worshipping,