: Songs of Two Nations by Swinburne Algernon Charles - Poetry

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A SONG OF ITALY

ODE ON THE PROCLAMATION OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

DIRAE

I saw the double-featured statue stand Of Memnon or of Janus, half with night Veiled, and fast bound with iron; half with light Crowned, holding all men's future in his hand.

And all the old westward face of time grown grey Was writ with cursing and inscribed for death; But on the face that met the mornings breath Fear died of hope as darkness dies of day.

A SONG OF ITALY

Inscribed

With All Devotion and Reverence

To:

JOSEPH MAZZINI

? She ceased, and heaven was full of flame and sound, And earth's old limbs unbound Shone and waxed warm with fiery dew and seed Shed through her at this her need: And highest in heaven, a mother and full of grace, With no more covered face, With no more lifted hands and bended knees, Rose, as from sacred seas Love, when old time was full of plenteous springs, That fairest-born of things, The land that holds the rest in tender thrall For love's sake in them all, That binds with words and holds with eyes and hands All hearts in all men's lands. So died the dream whence rose the live desire That here takes form and fire, A spirit from the splendid grave of sleep Risen, that ye should not weep, Should not weep more nor ever, O ye that hear And ever have held her dear, Seeing now indeed she weeps not who wept sore, And sleeps not any more. Hearken ye towards her, O people, exalt your eyes; Is this a thing that dies?

? Italia! by the passion of the pain That bent and rent thy chain; Italia! by the breaking of the bands, The shaking of the lands; Beloved, O men's mother, O men's queen, Arise, appear, be seen! Arise, array thyself in manifold Queen's raiment of wrought gold; With girdles of green freedom, and with red Roses, and white snow shed Above the flush and frondage of the hills That all thy deep dawn fills And all thy clear night veils and warms with wings Spread till the morning sings; The rose of resurrection, and the bright Breast lavish of the light, The lady lily like the snowy sky Ere the stars wholly die; As red as blood, and whiter than a wave, Flowers grown as from thy grave, From the green fruitful grass in Maytime hot, Thy grave, where thou art not. Gather the grass and weave, in sacred sign Of the ancient earth divine, The holy heart of things, the seed of birth, The mystical warm earth. O thou her flower of flowers, with treble braid Be thy sweet head arrayed, In witness of her mighty motherhood Who bore thee and found thee good, Her fairest-born of children, on whose head Her green and white and red Are hope and light and life, inviolate Of any latter fate. Fly, O our flag, through deep Italian air, Above the flags that were, The dusty shreds of shameful battle-flags Trampled and rent in rags, As withering woods in autumn's bitterest breath Yellow, and black as death; Black as crushed worms that sicken in the sense, And yellow as pestilence. Fly, green as summer and red as dawn and white As the live heart of light, The blind bright womb of colour unborn, that brings Forth all fair forms of things, As freedom all fair forms of nations dyed In divers-coloured pride. Fly fleet as wind on every wind that blows Between her seas and snows, From Alpine white, from Tuscan green, and where Vesuvius reddens air. Fly! and let all men see it, and all kings wail, And priests wax faint and pale, And the cold hordes that moan in misty places And the funereal races And the sick serfs of lands that wait and wane See thee and hate thee in vain. In the clear laughter of all winds and waves, In the blown grass of graves, In the long sound of fluctuant boughs of trees, In the broad breath of seas, Bid the sound of thy flying folds be heard; And as a spoken word Full of that fair god and that merciless Who rends the Pythoness, So be the sound and so the fire that saith She feels her ancient breath And the old blood move in her immortal veins.

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