Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/233

 When Marcus Brutus he conceived complete, And strove to hurl him out by blow on blow Upon the marble, at Art's thunderheat, Till haply some pre-shadow rising slow Of what his Italy would fancy meet To be called Brutus, straight his plastic hand Fell back before his prophet soul, and left A fragment a maimed Brutus,—but more grand Than this, so named of Rome, was! Let thy weft Be of one woof and warp, Mazzini!—stand With no man of a spotless fame bereft— Not for Italia! Neither stand apart, No, not for the republic!—from those pure Brave men who hold the level of thy heart In patriot truth, as lover and as doer, Albeit they will not follow where thou art As extreme theorist. Trust and distrust fewer; And so bind strong and keep unstained the cause Which, at God's signal, war-trumps newly blown Shall yet annuntiate to the world's applause.

Just now, the world is busy: it has grown A Fair-going world. Imperial England draws The flowing ends of the earth, from Fez, Canton, Delhi and Stockholm, Athens and Madrid, The Russias and the vast Americas, As a queen gathers in her robes amid Her golden cincture,—isles, peninsulas, Capes, continents, far inland countries hid By jaspar sands and hills of chrysopras, All trailing in their splendours through the door