How thou dost hold him near And whisper in his ear Of the lost Paradise that lies beyond the alluring haze! In tears I tossed my coin from Trevi's edge,- Has quenched my flame of breath, Oh, let me join the faithful shades that throng that fount above. ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON. ITALIA ITALIA! thou art fallen, though with sheen And on thy sapphire lake in tossing pride O Fair and Strong! O Strong and Fair in vain! Look southward where Rome's desecrated town And smite the Spoiler with the sword of pain. A SONG OF ITALY ITALIA! by the passion of the pain That bent and rent thy chain; Italia; by the breaking of the bands, The shaking of the lands; Beloved, O men's mother, O men's queen, Arise, appear, be seen! Arise, array thyself in manifold Queen's raiment of wrought gold; With girdles of green freedom, and with red Roses, and white snow shed Above the flush and frondage of the hills That all thy deep dawn fills That all thy clear night veils and warms with wings Spread till the morning sings; The rose of resurrection, and the bright Breast lavish of the light, The lady lily like the snowy sky Ere the stars wholly die; As red as blood, and whiter than a wave, From the green fruitful grass in Maytime hot, Gather the grass and weave, in sacred sign Of the ancient earth divine, The holy heart of things, the seed of birth, O thou her flower of flowers, with treble braid Be thy sweet head arrayed, In witness of her mighty motherhood Who bore thee and found thee good, Her fairest-born of children, on whose head Her green and white and red Are hope and light and life, inviolate Of any latter fate. Fly, O our flag, through deep Italian air, Above the flags that were, The dusty shreds of shameful battle-flags Trampled and rent in rags, As withering woods in autumn's bitterest breath Yellow, and black as death; Black as crushed worms that sicken in the sense, And yellow as pestilence. Fly, green as summer and red as dawn and white As the live heart of light, The blind bright womb of color unborn, that brings Forth all fair forms of things, As freedom all fair forms of nations dyed In divers-coloured pride. Fly fleet as wind on every wind that blows Between her seas and snows, From Alpine white, from Tuscan green, and where Vesuvius reddens air. Fly! and let all men see it, and all kings wail, And priests wax faint and pale, And the cold hordes that moan in misty places And the funereal races And the sick serfs of lands that wait and wane In the clear laughter of all winds and waves, In the long sound of fluctuant boughs of trees, Bid the sound of thy flying folds be heard; And as a spoken word Full of that fair god and that merciless Who rends the Pythoness, So be the sound and so the fire that saith She feels her ancient breath And the old blood move in her immortal veins. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, "DE GUSTIBUS—” I YOUR ghost will walk, you lover of trees, (If our loves remain) In an English lane, By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies. A boy and a girl, if the good fates please, The happier they! Draw yourself up from the light of the moon, And let them pass, as they will too soon, With the beanflower's boon, And the blackbird's tune, And May, and June! II What I love best in all the world In a gash of the wind-griev'd Apennine. |