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 crownëd 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.