Personal Poems, Complete






NAPLES

INSCRIBED TO ROBERT C. WATERSTON, OF BOSTON.

Helen Waterston died at Naples in her eighteenth year, and lies buried in the Protestant cemetery there. The stone over her grave bears the lines,

               Fold her, O Father, in Thine arms,
               And let her henceforth be
               A messenger of love between
               Our human hearts and Thee.
     I give thee joy!—I know to thee
     The dearest spot on earth must be
     Where sleeps thy loved one by the summer sea;
     Where, near her sweetest poet's tomb,
     The land of Virgil gave thee room
     To lay thy flower with her perpetual bloom.

     I know that when the sky shut down
     Behind thee on the gleaming town,
     On Baiae's baths and Posilippo's crown;

     And, through thy tears, the mocking day
     Burned Ischia's mountain lines away,
     And Capri melted in its sunny bay;

     Through thy great farewell sorrow shot
     The sharp pang of a bitter thought
     That slaves must tread around that holy spot.

     Thou knewest not the land was blest
     In giving thy beloved rest,
     Holding the fond hope closer to her breast,

     That every sweet and saintly grave
     Was freedom's prophecy, and gave
     The pledge of Heaven to sanctify and save.

     That pledge is answered. To thy ear
     The unchained city sends its cheer,
     And, tuned to joy, the muffled bells of fear

     Ring Victor in. The land sits free
     And happy by the summer sea,
     And Bourbon Naples now is Italy!

     She smiles above her broken chain
     The languid smile that follows pain,
     Stretching her cramped limbs to the sun again.

     Oh, joy for all, who hear her call
     From gray Camaldoli's convent-wall
     And Elmo's towers to freedom's carnival!

     A new life breathes among her vines
     And olives, like the breath of pines
     Blown downward from the breezy Apennines.

     Lean, O my friend, to meet that breath,
     Rejoice as one who witnesseth
     Beauty from ashes rise, and life from death!

     Thy sorrow shall no more be pain,
     Its tears shall fall in sunlit rain,
     Writing the grave with flowers: "Arisen again!"

     1860.

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