Oh, this world: this cheating and screening
Of cheats! this conscience for candle-wicks,
Not beacon-fires; this over-weening

Of under-hand diplomatical tricks,

Dared for the country while scorned for the counter!

Oh, this envy of those who mount here,

And oh, this malice to make them trip!

Rather quenching the fire there, drying the fount here, To frozen body and thirsty lip,

Than leave to a neighbour their ministration.

I cry aloud in my poet-passion,

Viewing my England o'er Alp and sea.
I loved her more in her ancient fashion:
She carries her rifles too thick for me,
Who spares them so in the cause of a brother.

Suspicion, panic? end this pother.

The sword, kept sheathless at peace-time, rusts.
None fears for himself while he feels for another :
The brave man either fights or trusts,
And wears no mail in his private chamber.

Beautiful Italy! golden amber

Warm with the kisses of lover and traitor! Thou who hast drawn us on to remember, Draw us to hope now: let us be greater By this new future than that old story,

Till truer glory replaces all glory,

As the torch grows blind at the dawn of day; And the nations, rising up, their sorry

And foolish sins shall put away,

As children their toys when the teacher enters :

Till Love's one centre devour these centres
Of many self-loves; and the patriot's trick

To better his land by egotist ventures,

Defamed from a virtue, shall make men sick,
As the scalp at the belt of some red hero.

For certain virtues have dropped to zero,

Left by the sun on the mountain's dewy side;
Churchman's charities, tender as Nero,
Indian suttee, heathen suicide,
Service to rights divine, proved hollow:

And Heptarchy patriotisms must follow.
-National voices, distinct yet dependent,
Ensphering each other, as swallow does swallow,
With circles still widening and ever ascendant,
In multiform life to united progression,-

These shall remain. And when, in the session
Of nations, the separate language is heard,
Each shall aspire, in sublime indiscretion,

To help with a thought or exalt with a word
Less her own than her rival's honour.

Each Christian nation shall take upon her

The law of the Christian man in vast:
The crown of the getter shall fall to the donor,
And last shall be first while first shall be last,
And to love best shall still be, to reign unsurpassed.

THE DANCE.

You remember down at Florence our Cascine,

THIOTHE

Where the people on the feast-days walk and drive, And, through the trees, long-drawn in many a green way, O'er-roofing hum and murmur like a hive,

The river and the mountains look alive?

You remember the piazzone there, the stand-place
Of carriages a-brim with Florence beauties,

Who lean and melt to music as the band plays,
Or smile and chat with some one who a-foot is,
Or on horseback, in observance of male duties?
'T is so pretty, in the afternoons of summer,

So many gracious faces brought together!
Call it rout, or call it concert, they have come here,
In the floating of the fan and of the feather,
To reciprocate with beauty the fine weather.
While the flower-girls offer nosegays (because they too
Go with other sweets) at every carriage-door ;
Here, by shake of a white finger, signed away to
Some next buyer, who sits buying score on score,
Piling roses upon roses evermore.

And last season, when the French camp had its station In the meadow-ground, things quickened and grew

gayer

Through the mingling of the liberating nation

With this people; groups of Frenchmen everywhere, Strolling, gazing, judging lightly-" who was fair."

Then the noblest lady present took upon her

To speak nobly from her carriage for the rest:
“Pray these officers from France to do us honour
By dancing with us straightway." The request
Was gravely apprehended as addressed.

And the men of France bareheaded, bowing lowly,
Led out each a proud signora to the space

Which the startled crowd had rounded for them-slowly,
Just a touch of still emotion in his face,

Not presuming through the symbol, on the grace. There was silence in the people: some lips trembled, But none jested. Broke the music, at a glance : And the daughters of our princes, thus assembled, Stepped the measure with the gallant sons of France: Hush it might have been a Mass, and not a dance,

And they danced there till the blue that overskied us, Swooned with passion, though the footing seemed

sedate;

And the mountains, heaving mighty hearts beside us,
Sighed a rapture in a shadow, to dilate,

And touch the holy stone where Dante sate.

Then the sons of France bareheaded, lowly bowing,
Led the ladies back where kinsmen of the south
Stood, received them; till, with burst of overflowing
Feeling-husbands, brothers, Florence's male youth,
Turned, and kissed the martial strangers mouth to
mouth.

And a cry went up, a cry from all that people!

—You have heard a people cheering, you suppose, For the Member, mayor—with chorus from the steeple? This was different scarce as loud perhaps, (who knows?)

For we saw wet eyes around us ere the close.

And we felt as if a nation, too long borne in

By hard wrongers, comprehending in such attitude That God had spoken somewhere since the morning, That men were somehow brothers, by no platitude, — Cried exultant in great wonder and free gratitude.

CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.

PART I.

I HEARD last night a little child go singing
'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,

O bella libertà, O bella!-stringing

The same words still on notes he went in search

So high for, you concluded the upspringing

Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch

Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green,
And that the heart of Italy must beat,
While such a voice had leave to rise serene
'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street:
A little child, too, who not long had been
By mother's finger steadied on his feet,
And still O bella libertà he sang.

Then I thought, musing, of the innumerous
Sweet songs which still for Italy outrang
From older singers' lips who sang not thus
Exultingly and purely, yet, with pang
Fast sheathed in music, touched the heart of us
So finely that the pity scarcely pained.
I thought how Filicaja led on others,

Bewailers for their Italy enchained,

And how they called her childless among mothers,
Widow of empires, ay, and scarce refrained
Cursing her beauty to her face, as brothers

Might a shamed sister's," Had she been less fair
She were less wretched; "-how, evoking so
From congregated wrong and heaped despair
Of men and women writhing under blow,
Harrowed and hideous in a filthy lair,
Some personating Image wherein woe
Was wrapt in beauty from offending much,
They called it Cybele, or Niobe,

Or laid it corpse-like on a bier for such,
Where all the world might drop for Italy

Those cadenced tears which burn not where they touch,

"Juliet of nations, canst thou die as we?

And was the violet that crowned thy head
So over-large, though new buds made it rough,
It slipped down and across thine eyelids dead,
O sweet, fair Juliet?" Of such songs enough,

Too many of such complaints! behold, instead,