Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/229

 His South, too, has learnt something certainly, Whereof the practice will bring profit soon; And peradventure other eyes may see, From Casa Guidi windows, what is done Or undone. Whatsoever deeds they be, Pope Pius will be glorified in none.

Record that gain, Mazzini !—it shall top Some heights of sorrow. Peter's rock, so named, Shall lure no vessel, any more, to drop Among the breakers. Peter's chair is shamed Like any vulgar throne the nations lop To pieces for their firewood unreclaimed; And, when it burns too, we shall see as well In Italy as elsewhere. Let it burn. The cross, accounted still adorable, Is Christ's cross only !—if the thief's would earn Some stealthy genuflexions, we rebel ; And here the impenitent thief's has had its turn, As God knows; and the people on their knees Scoff and toss back the croziers, stretched like yokes To press their heads down lower by degrees. So Italy, by means of these last strokes, Escapes the danger which preceded these, Of leaving captured hands in cloven oaks Of leaving very souls within the buckle Whence bodies struggled outward of supposing That freemen may like bondsmen kneel and truckle, And then stand up as usual, without losing An inch of stature. Those whom she-wolves suckle Will bite as wolves do, in the grapple-closing