O FOSTER-NURSE of man’s abandoned glory | |
| Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendor, | |
| Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story, | |
| As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender: | |
| The light-invested angel Poesy | 5 |
| Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee. | |
| |
| And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught | |
| By loftiest meditations; marble knew | |
| The sculptor’s fearless soul, and, as he wrought, | |
| The grace of his own power and freedom grew. | 10 |
| And (more than all) heroic, just, sublime | |
| Thou wert among the false,—was this thy crime? | |
| |
| Yes; and on Pisa’s marble walls the twine | |
| Of direst weeds hangs garlanded, the snake | |
| Inhabits its wrecked palaces; in thine | 15 |
| A beast of subtler venom now doth make | |
| Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown, | |
| And thus thy victim’s fate is as thine own. | |
| |
| The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare, | |
| And love and freedom blossom but to wither; | 20 |
| And good and ill like vines entangled are, | |
| So that their grapes may oft be plucked together; | |
| Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make | |
| Thy heart rejoice for dead Mazenghi’s sake. | |
| |
| No record of his crime remains in story, | 25 |
| But if the morning bright as evening shone, | |
| It was some high and holy deed, by glory | |
| Pursued into forgetfulness, which won | |
| From the blind crowd he made secure and free | |
| The patriot’s meed, toil, death, and infamy. | 30 |
| |
| For when by sound of trumpet was declared | |
| A price upon his life, and there was set | |
| A penalty of blood on all who shared | |
| So much of water with him as might wet | |
| His lips, which speech divided not,—he went | 35 |
| Alone, as you may guess, to banishment. | |
| |
| Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast, | |
| He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold | |
| Month after month endured; it was a feast | |
| Whene’er he found those globes of deep red gold | 40 |
| Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear, | |
| Suspended in their emerald atmosphere. | |
| |
| And in the roofless huts of vast morasses, | |
| Deserted by the fever-stricken serf, | |
| All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses, | 45 |
| And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf, | |
| And where the huge and speckled aloe made, | |
| Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade, | |
| |
| He housed himself. There is a point of strand | |
| Near Vada’s tower and town; and on one side | 50 |
| The treacherous marsh divides it from the land, | |
| Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide; | |
| And on the other creeps eternally, | |
| Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea. | |
| |
