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* * * * * SHE came, whom Casa Guidi’s chambers knew, | |
| And know more proudly, an immortal, now; | |
| The air without a star was shivered through | |
| With the resistless radiance of her brow, | |
| And glimmering landscapes from the darkness grew. | 5 |
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| Thin, phantom-like; and yet she brought me rest, | |
| Unspoken words, an understood command | |
| Sealed weary lids with sleep, together pressed | |
| In clasping quiet wandering hand to hand, | |
| And smoothed the folded cloth above the breast. | 10 |
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| Now, looking through these windows, where the day | |
| Shines on a terrace splendid with the gold | |
| Of autumn shrubs, and green with glossy bay, | |
| Once more her face, re-made from dust, I hold | |
| In light so clear it cannot pass away:— | 15 |
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| The quiet brow; the face so frail and fair | |
| For such a voice of song; the steady eye, | |
| Where shone the spirit fated to outwear | |
| Its fragile house;—and on her features lie | |
| The soft half-shadows of her drooping hair. | 20 |
| |
| Who could forget those features, having known? | |
| Whose memory do his kindling reverence wrong | |
| That heard the soft Ionian flute, whose tone | |
| Changed with the silver trumpet of her song? | |
| No sweeter airs from woman’s lips were blown. | 25 |
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| Ah, in the silence she has left behind | |
| How many a sorrowing voice of life is still! | |
| Songless she left the land that cannot find | |
| Song for its heroes; and the Roman hill, | |
| Once free, shall for her ghost the laurel wind. | 30 |
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| The tablet tells you, “Here she wrote and died,” | |
| And grateful Florence bids the record stand: | |
| Here bend Italian love and English pride | |
| Above her grave,—and one remoter land, | |
| Free as her prayers could make it, at their side. | 35 |
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| I will not doubt the vision: yonder see | |
| The moving clouds that speak of freedom won! | |
| And life, new-lighted, with a lark-like glee | |
| Through Casa Guidi windows hails the sun, | |
| Grown from the rest her spirit gave to me. | 40 |
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