James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
February 14Mother and Poet
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
D
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!
And good at my art, for a woman, men said.
But this woman, this, who is agonized here,
The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
Forever instead.
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
Ah boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you pressed,
What art’s for a woman! To hold on her knees
Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat
Cling, struggle a little! to sew by degrees
And ’broider the long-clothes and neat little coat!
To dream and to dote.
Speak plain the word “country,” I taught them no doubt
That a country’s a thing men should die for at need.
I prated of liberty, rights, and about
The tyrant turned out.
I exulted! nay, let them go forth at the wheels
Of the guns and denied not.—But then the surprise,
When one sits quite alone!—Then one weeps, then one kneels!
—God! how the house feels!
With my kisses, of camp-life, and glory, and how
They both loved me, and soon, coming home to be spoiled,
In return would fan off every fly from my brow
With their green laurel-bough.
And some one came out of the cheers in the street
With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,
While they cheered in the street.
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.
Writ now but in one hand. “I was not to faint.
One loved me for two … would be with me ere long:
And “viva Italia” he died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint.”
Of a presence that turned off the balls … was imprest
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
And how ’twas impossible, quite dispossessed,
To live on for the rest.”
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta:—“Shot.
Tell his mother.” Ah, ah, “his,” “their” mother; not “mine.”
No voice says “my mother” again to me. What!
You think Guido forgot?
They drop earth’s affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through that love and sorrow which reconciled so
The above and below.
To the face of thy mother! consider, I pray,
How we common mothers! stand desolate, mark,
Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away,
And no last word to say!
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
’Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall.
And when Italy’s made, for what end is it done,
If we have not a son?
When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport
Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?
When your guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short.—
When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green and red,
When you have your country from mountain to sea,
When King Victor has Italy’s crown on his head,
(And I have my dead,)
And burn your lights faintly! My country is there,
Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow,
My Italy’s there, with my brave civic pair,
To disfranchise despair.
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn.
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
Into such wail as this!—and we sit on forlorn
When the man-child is born.
And one of them shot in the east by the sea!
Both! both my boys!—If in keeping the feast
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me!