Personal Poems, Complete

GARIBALDI

     In trance and dream of old, God's prophet saw
     The casting down of thrones. Thou, watching lone
     The hot Sardinian coast-line, hazy-hilled,
     Where, fringing round Caprera's rocky zone
     With foam, the slow waves gather and withdraw,
     Behold'st the vision of the seer fulfilled,
     And hear'st the sea-winds burdened with a sound
     Of falling chains, as, one by one, unbound,
     The nations lift their right hands up and swear
     Their oath of freedom. From the chalk-white wall
     Of England, from the black Carpathian range,
     Along the Danube and the Theiss, through all
     The passes of the Spanish Pyrenees,
     And from the Seine's thronged banks, a murmur strange
     And glad floats to thee o'er thy summer seas
     On the salt wind that stirs thy whitening hair,—
     The song of freedom's bloodless victories!
     Rejoice, O Garibaldi! Though thy sword
     Failed at Rome's gates, and blood seemed vainly poured
     Where, in Christ's name, the crowned infidel
     Of France wrought murder with the arms of hell
     On that sad mountain slope whose ghostly dead,
     Unmindful of the gray exorcist's ban,
     Walk, unappeased, the chambered Vatican,
     And draw the curtains of Napoleon's bed!
     God's providence is not blind, but, full of eyes,
     It searches all the refuges of lies;
     And in His time and way, the accursed things
     Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage
     Has clashed defiance from hot youth to age
     Shall perish. All men shall be priests and kings,
     One royal brotherhood, one church made free
     By love, which is the law of liberty.

     1869.