The Prophecy of Dante

"'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,And coming events cast their shadows before."

Campbell, .

DEDICATION.

Lady! if for the cold and cloudy clime5Where I was born, but where I would not die,Of the great Poet-Sire of ItalyI dare to build the imitative rhyme,Harsh Runic copy of the South's sublime,Thou art the cause; and howsoever I10Fall short of his immortal harmony,Thy gentle heart will pardon me the crime.Thou, in the pride of Beauty and of Youth,Spakest; and for thee to speak and be obeyedAre one; but only in the sunny South15Such sounds are uttered, and such charms displayed,So sweet a language from so fair a mouth--Ah! to what effort would it not persuade?

CANTO THE FIRST.

Once more in Man's frail world! which I had left20So long that 'twas forgotten; and I feelThe weight of clay again,--too soon bereftOf the Immortal Vision which could healMy earthly sorrows, and to God's own skiesLift me from that deep Gulf without repeal,25Where late my ears rung with the damned criesOf Souls in hopeless bale; and from that placeOf lesser torment, whence men may arisePure from the fire to join the Angelic race;Midst whom my own bright Beatricē blessed30My spirit with her light; and to the baseOf the Eternal Triad! first, last, best,Mysterious, three, sole, infinite, great God!Soul universal! led the mortal guest,Unblasted by the Glory, though he trod35From star to star to reach the almighty throne.Oh Beatrice! whose sweet limbs the sodSo long hath pressed, and the cold marble stone,Thou sole pure Seraph of my earliest love,Love so ineffable, and so alone,40That nought on earth could more my bosom move,And meeting thee in Heaven was but to meetThat without which my Soul, like the arkless dove,Had wandered still in search of, nor her feetRelieved her wing till found; without thy light45My Paradise had still been incomplete.Since my tenth sun gave summer to my sightThou wert my Life, the Essence of my thought,Loved ere I knew the name of Love, and brightStill in these dim old eyes, now overwrought50With the World's war, and years, and banishment,And tears for thee, by other woes untaught;For mine is not a nature to be bentBy tyrannous faction, and the brawling crowd,And though the long, long conflict hath been spent55In vain,--and never more, save when the cloudWhich overhangs the Apennine my mind's eyePierces to fancy Florence, once so proudOf me, can I return, though but to die,Unto my native soil,--they have not yet60Quenched the old exile's spirit, stern and high.But the Sun, though not overcast, must setAnd the night cometh; I am old in days,And deeds, and contemplation, and have metDestruction face to face in all his ways.65The World hath left me, what it found me, pure,And if I have not gathered yet its praise,I sought it not by any baser lure;Man wrongs, and Time avenges, and my nameMay form a monument not all obscure,70Though such was not my Ambition's end or aim,To add to the vain-glorious list of thoseWho dabble in the pettiness of fame,And make men's fickle breath the wind that blowsTheir sail, and deem it glory to be classed75With conquerors, and Virtue's other foes,In bloody chronicles of ages past.I would have had my Florence great and free;Oh Florence! Florence! unto me thou wastLike that Jerusalem which the Almighty He80Wept over, "but thou wouldst not;" as the birdGathers its young, I would have gathered theeBeneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heardMy voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce,Against the breast that cherished thee was stirred85Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce,And doom this body forfeit to the fire.Alas! how bitter is his country's curseTo him who for that country would expire,But did not merit to expire by her,90And loves her, loves her even in her ire.The day may come when she will cease to err,The day may come she would be proud to haveThe dust she dooms to scatter, and transferOf him, whom she denied a home, the grave.95But this shall not be granted; let my dustLie where it falls; nor shall the soil which gaveMe breath, but in her sudden fury thrustMe forth to breathe elsewhere, so reassumeMy indignant bones, because her angry gust100Forsooth is over, and repealed her doom;No,--she denied me what was mine--my roof,And shall not have what is not hers--my tomb.Too long her arméd wrath hath kept aloofThe breast which would have bled for her, the heart105That beat, the mind that was temptation proof,The man who fought, toiled, travelled, and each partOf a true citizen fulfilled, and sawFor his reward the Guelf's ascendant artPass his destruction even into a law.110These things are not made for forgetfulness,Florence shall be forgotten first; too rawThe wound, too deep the wrong, and the distressOf such endurance too prolonged to makeMy pardon greater, her injustice less,115Though late repented; yet--yet for her sakeI feel some fonder yearnings, and for thine,My own Beatricē, I would hardly takeVengeance upon the land which once was mine,And still is hallowed by thy dust's return,120Which would protect the murderess like a shrine,And save ten thousand foes by thy sole urn.Though, like old Marius from Minturnæ's marshAnd Carthage ruins, my lone breast may burnAt times with evil feelings hot and harsh,125And sometimes the last pangs of a vile foeWrithe in a dream before me, and o'erarchMy brow with hopes of triumph,--let them go!Such are the last infirmities of thoseWho long have suffered more than mortal woe,130And yet being mortal still, have no reposeBut on the pillow of Revenge--Revenge,Who sleeps to dream of blood, and waking glowsWith the oft-baffled, slakeless thirst of change,When we shall mount again, and they that trod135Be trampled on, while Death and Até rangeO'er humbled heads and severed necks----Great God!Take these thoughts from me--to thy hands I yieldMy many wrongs, and thine Almighty rodWill fall on those who smote me,--be my Shield!140As thou hast been in peril, and in pain,In turbulent cities, and the tented field--In toil, and many troubles borne in vainFor Florence,--I appeal from her to Thee!Thee, whom I late saw in thy loftiest reign,145Even in that glorious Vision, which to seeAnd live was never granted until now,And yet thou hast permitted this to me.Alas! with what a weight upon my browThe sense of earth and earthly things come back,150Corrosive passions, feelings dull and low,The heart's quick throb upon the mental rack,Long day, and dreary night; the retrospectOf half a century bloody and black,And the frail few years I may yet expect155Hoary and hopeless, but less hard to bear,For I have been too long and deeply wreckedOn the lone rock of desolate Despair,To lift my eyes more to the passing sailWhich shuns that reef so horrible and bare;160Nor raise my voice--for who would heed my wail?I am not of this people, nor this age,And yet my harpings will unfold a taleWhich shall preserve these times when not a pageOf their perturbéd annals could attract165An eye to gaze upon their civil rage,Did not my verse embalm full many an actWorthless as they who wrought it: 'tis the doomOf spirits of my order to be rackedIn life, to wear their hearts out, and consume170Their days in endless strife, and die alone;Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,And pilgrims come from climes where they have knownThe name of him--who now is but a name,And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone,175Spread his--by him unheard, unheeded--fame;And mine at least hath cost me dear: to dieIs nothing; but to wither thus--to tameMy mind down from its own infinity--To live in narrow ways with little men,180A common sight to every common eye,A wanderer, while even wolves can find a den,Ripped from all kindred, from all home, all thingsThat make communion sweet, and soften pain--To feel me in the solitude of kings185Without the power that makes them bear a crown--To envy every dove his nest and wingsWhich waft him where the Apennine looks downOn Arno, till he perches, it may be,Within my all inexorable town,190Where yet my boys are, and that fatal She,Their mother, the cold partner who hath broughtDestruction for a dowry--this to seeAnd feel, and know without repair, hath taughtA bitter lesson; but it leaves me free:195I have not vilely found, nor basely sought,They made an Exile--not a Slave of me.

CANTO THE SECOND.

The Spirit of the fervent days of Old,When words were things that came to pass, and Thought200Flashed o'er the future, bidding men beholdTheir children's children's doom already broughtForth from the abyss of Time which is to be,The Chaos of events, where lie half-wroughtShapes that must undergo mortality;205What the great Seers of Israel wore within,That Spirit was on them, and is on me,And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the dinOf conflict none will hear, or hearing heedThis voice from out the Wilderness, the sin210Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed,The only guerdon I have ever known.Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed,Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshownWith dim sepulchral light, bid me forget215In thine irreparable wrongs my own;We can have but one Country, and even yetThou'rt mine--my bones shall be within thy breast,My Soul within thy language, which once setWith our old Roman sway in the wide West;220But I will make another tongue ariseAs lofty and more sweet, in which expressedThe hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs,Shall find alike such sounds for every themeThat every word, as brilliant as thy skies,225Shall realise a Poet's proudest dream,And make thee Europe's Nightingale of Song;So that all present speech to thine shall seemThe note of meaner birds, and every tongueConfess its barbarism when compared with thine.230This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong,Thy Tuscan bard, the banished Ghibelline.Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuriesIs rent,--a thousand years which yet supineLie like the ocean waves ere winds arise,235Heaving in dark and sullen undulation,Float from Eternity into these eyes;The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station,The unborn Earthquake yet is in the womb,The bloody Chaos yet expects Creation,240But all things are disposing for thy doom;The Elements await but for the Word,"Let there be darkness!" and thou grow'st a tomb!Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword,Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise,245Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored:Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice?Thou, Italy! whose ever golden fields,Ploughed by the sunbeams solely, would sufficeFor the world's granary; thou, whose sky Heaven gilds250With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue;Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer buildsHer palace, in whose cradle Empire grew,And formed the Eternal City's ornamentsFrom spoils of Kings whom freemen overthrew;255Birthplace of heroes, sanctuary of Saints,Where earthly first, then heavenly glory madeHer home; thou, all which fondest Fancy paints,And finds her prior vision but portrayedIn feeble colours, when the eye--from the Alp260Of horrid snow, and rock, and shaggy shadeOf desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalpNods to the storm--dilates and dotes o'er thee,And wistfully implores, as 'twere, for helpTo see thy sunny fields, my Italy,265Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer stillThe more approached, and dearest were they free,Thou--Thou must wither to each tyrant's will:The Goth hath been,--the German, Frank, and HunAre yet to come,--and on the imperial hill270Ruin, already proud of the deeds doneBy the old barbarians, there awaits the new,Throned on the Palatine, while lost and wonRome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hueOf human sacrifice and Roman slaughter275Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue,And deepens into red the saffron waterOf Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest,And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,Vowed to their God, have shrieking fled, and ceased280Their ministry: the nations take their prey,Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beastAnd bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than theyAre; these but gorge the flesh, and lap the goreOf the departed, and then go their way;285But those, the human savages, exploreAll paths of torture, and insatiate yet,With Ugolino hunger prowl for more.Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set;The chiefless army of the dead, which late290Beneath the traitor Prince's banner met,Hath left its leader's ashes at the gate;Had but the royal Rebel lived, perchanceThou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate.Oh! Rome, the Spoiler or the spoil of France,295From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, neverShall foreign standard to thy walls advance,But Tiber shall become a mournful river.Oh! when the strangers pass the Alps and Po,Crush them, ye Rocks! Floods whelm them, and for ever!300Why sleep the idle Avalanches so,To topple on the lonely pilgrim's head?Why doth Eridanus but overflowThe peasant's harvest from his turbid bed?Were not each barbarous horde a nobler prey?305Over Cambyses' host the desert spreadHer sandy ocean, and the Sea-waves' swayRolled over Pharaoh and his thousands,--why,Mountains and waters, do ye not as they?And you, ye Men! Romans, who dare not die,310Sons of the conquerors who overthrewThose who overthrew proud Xerxes, where yet lieThe dead whose tomb Oblivion never knew,Are the Alps weaker than Thermopylæ?Their passes more alluring to the view315Of an invader? is it they, or ye,That to each host the mountain-gate unbar,And leave the march in peace, the passage free?Why, Nature's self detains the Victor's car,And makes your land impregnable, if earth320Could be so; but alone she will not war,Yet aids the warrior worthy of his birthIn a soil where the mothers bring forth men:Not so with those whose souls are little worth;For them no fortress can avail,--the den325Of the poor reptile which preserves its stingIs more secure than walls of adamant, whenThe hearts of those within are quivering.Are ye not brave? Yes, yet the Ausonian soilHath hearts, and hands, and arms, and hosts to bring330Against Oppression; but how vain the toil,While still Division sows the seeds of woeAnd weakness, till the Stranger reaps the spoil.Oh! my own beauteous land! so long laid low,So long the grave of thy own children's hopes,335When there is but required a single blowTo break the chain, yet--yet the Avenger stops,And Doubt and Discord step 'twixt thine and thee,And join their strength to that which with thee copes;What is there wanting then to set thee free,340And show thy beauty in its fullest light?To make the Alps impassable; and we,Her Sons, may do this with one deed--Unite.

CANTO THE THIRD.

From out the mass of never-dying ill,345The Plague, the Prince, the Stranger, and the Sword,Vials of wrath but emptied to refillAnd flow again, I cannot all recordThat crowds on my prophetic eye: the EarthAnd Ocean written o'er would not afford350Space for the annal, yet it shall go forth;Yes, all, though not by human pen, is graven,There where the farthest suns and stars have birth,Spread like a banner at the gate of Heaven,The bloody scroll of our millennial wrongs355Waves, and the echo of our groans is drivenAthwart the sound of archangelic songs,And Italy, the martyred nation's gore,Will not in vain arise to where belongsOmnipotence and Mercy evermore:360Like to a harpstring stricken by the wind,The sound of her lament shall, rising o'erThe Seraph voices, touch the Almighty Mind.Meantime I, humblest of thy sons, and ofEarth's dust by immortality refined365To Sense and Suffering, though the vain may scoff,And tyrants threat, and meeker victims bowBefore the storm because its breath is rough,To thee, my Country! whom before, as now,I loved and love, devote the mournful lyre370And melancholy gift high Powers allowTo read the future: and if now my fireIs not as once it shone o'er thee, forgive!I but foretell thy fortunes--then expire;Think not that I would look on them and live.375A Spirit forces me to see and speak,And for my guerdon grants not to survive;My Heart shall be poured over thee and break:Yet for a moment, ere I must resumeThy sable web of Sorrow, let me take380Over the gleams that flash athwart thy gloomA softer glimpse; some stars shine through thy night,And many meteors, and above thy tombLeans sculptured Beauty, which Death cannot blight:And from thine ashes boundless Spirits rise385To give thee honour, and the earth delight;Thy soil shall still be pregnant with the wise,The gay, the learned, the generous, and the brave,Native to thee as Summer to thy skies,Conquerors on foreign shores, and the far wave,390Discoverers of new worlds, which take their name;For thee alone they have no arm to save,And all thy recompense is in their fame,A noble one to them, but not to thee--Shall they be glorious, and thou still the same?395Oh! more than these illustrious far shall beThe Being--and even yet he may be born--The mortal Saviour who shall set thee free,And see thy diadem, so changed and wornBy fresh barbarians, on thy brow replaced;400And the sweet Sun replenishing thy morn,Thy moral morn, too long with clouds defaced,And noxious vapours from Avernus risen,Such as all they must breathe who are debasedBy Servitude, and have the mind in prison.405Yet through this centuried eclipse of woeSome voices shall be heard, and Earth shall listen;Poets shall follow in the path I show,And make it broader: the same brilliant skyWhich cheers the birds to song shall bid them glow,410And raise their notes as natural and high;Tuneful shall be their numbers; they shall singMany of Love, and some of Liberty,But few shall soar upon that Eagle's wing,And look in the Sun's face, with Eagle's gaze,415All free and fearless as the feathered King,But fly more near the earth; how many a phraseSublime shall lavished be on some small princeIn all the prodigality of Praise!And language, eloquently false, evince420The harlotry of Genius, which, like Beauty,Too oft forgets its own self-reverence,And looks on prostitution as a duty.He who once enters in a Tyrant's hallAs guest is slave--his thoughts become a booty,425And the first day which sees the chain enthralA captive, sees his half of Manhood gone--The Soul's emasculation saddens allHis spirit; thus the Bard too near the throneQuails from his inspiration, bound to please,--430How servile is the task to please alone!To smooth the verse to suit his Sovereign's easeAnd royal leisure, nor too much prolongAught save his eulogy, and find, and seize,Or force, or forge fit argument of Song!435Thus trammelled, thus condemned to Flattery's trebles,He toils through all, still trembling to be wrong:For fear some noble thoughts, like heavenly rebels,Should rise up in high treason to his brain,He sings, as the Athenian spoke, with pebbles440In's mouth, lest Truth should stammer through his strain.But out of the long file of sonneteersThere shall be some who will not sing in vain,And he, their Prince, shall rank among my peers,And Love shall be his torment; but his grief445Shall make an immortality of tears,And Italy shall hail him as the ChiefOf Poet-lovers, and his higher songOf Freedom wreathe him with as green a leaf.But in a farther age shall rise along450The banks of Po two greater still than he;The World which smiled on him shall do them wrongTill they are ashes, and repose with me.The first will make an epoch with his lyre,And fill the earth with feats of Chivalry:455His Fancy like a rainbow, and his Fire,Like that of Heaven, immortal, and his ThoughtBorne onward with a wing that cannot tire;Pleasure shall, like a butterfly new caught,Flutter her lovely pinions o'er his theme,460And Art itself seem into Nature wroughtBy the transparency of his bright dream.--The second, of a tenderer, sadder mood,Shall pour his soul out o'er Jerusalem;He, too, shall sing of Arms, and Christian blood465Shed where Christ bled for man; and his high harpShall, by the willow over Jordan's flood,Revive a song of Sion, and the sharpConflict, and final triumph of the braveAnd pious, and the strife of Hell to warp470Their hearts from their great purpose, until waveThe red-cross banners where the first red CrossWas crimsoned from His veins who died to save,Shall be his sacred argument; the lossOf years, of favour, freedom, even of fame475Contested for a time, while the smooth glossOf Courts would slide o'er his forgotten nameAnd call Captivity a kindness--meantTo shield him from insanity or shame--Such shall be his meek guerdon! who was sent480To be Christ's Laureate--they reward him well!Florence dooms me but death or banishment,Ferrara him a pittance and a cell,Harder to bear and less deserved, for IHad stung the factions which I strove to quell;485But this meek man who with a lover's eyeWill look on Earth and Heaven, and who will deignTo embalm with his celestial flattery,As poor a thing as e'er was spawned to reign,What will he do to merit such a doom?490Perhaps he'll love,--and is not Love in vainTorture enough without a living tomb?Yet it will be so--he and his compeer,The Bard of Chivalry, will both consumeIn penury and pain too many a year,495And, dying in despondency, bequeathTo the kind World, which scarce will yield a tear,A heritage enriching all who breatheWith the wealth of a genuine Poet's soul,And to their country a redoubled wreath,500Unmatched by time; not Hellas can unrollThrough her Olympiads two such names, though oneOf hers be mighty;--and is this the wholeOf such men's destiny beneath the Sun?Must all the finer thoughts, the thrilling sense,505The electric blood with which their arteries run,Their body's self turned soul with the intenseFeeling of that which is, and fancy ofThat which should be, to such a recompenseConduct? shall their bright plumage on the rough510Storm be still scattered? Yes, and it must be;For, formed of far too penetrable stuff,These birds of Paradise but long to fleeBack to their native mansion, soon they findEarth's mist with their pure pinions not agree,515And die or are degraded; for the mindSuccumbs to long infection, and despair,And vulture Passions flying close behind,Await the moment to assail and tear;And when, at length, the wingéd wanderers stoop,520Then is the Prey-birds' triumph, then they shareThe spoil, o'erpowered at length by one fell swoop.Yet some have been untouched who learned to bear,Some whom no Power could ever force to droop,Who could resist themselves even, hardest care!525And task most hopeless; but some such have been,And if my name amongst the number were,That Destiny austere, and yet serene,Were prouder than more dazzling fame unblessed;The Alp's snow summit nearer heaven is seen530Than the Volcano's fierce eruptive crest,Whose splendour from the black abyss is flung,While the scorched mountain, from whose burning breastA temporary torturing flame is wrung,Shines for a night of terror, then repels535Its fire back to the Hell from whence it sprung,The Hell which in its entrails ever dwells.

CANTO THE FOURTH.

Many are Poets who have never pennedTheir inspiration, and perchance the best:540They felt, and loved, and died, but would not lendTheir thoughts to meaner beings; they compressedThe God within them, and rejoined the starsUnlaurelled upon earth, but far more blessedThan those who are degraded by the jars545Of Passion, and their frailties linked to fame,Conquerors of high renown, but full of scars.Many are Poets but without the name;For what is Poesy but to createFrom overfeeling Good or Ill; and aim550At an external life beyond our fate,And be the new Prometheus of new men,Bestowing fire from Heaven, and then, too late,Finding the pleasure given repaid with pain,And vultures to the heart of the bestower,555Who, having lavished his high gift in vain,Lies to his lone rock by the sea-shore?So be it: we can bear.--But thus all theyWhose Intellect is an o'ermastering PowerWhich still recoils from its encumbering clay560Or lightens it to spirit, whatsoe'erThe form which their creations may essay,Are bards; the kindled Marble's bust may wearMore poesy upon its speaking browThan aught less than the Homeric page may bear;565One noble stroke with a whole life may glow,Or deify the canvass till it shineWith beauty so surpassing all below,That they who kneel to Idols so divineBreak no commandment, for high Heaven is there570Transfused, transfigurated: and the lineOf Poesy, which peoples but the airWith Thought and Beings of our thought reflected,Can do no more: then let the artist shareThe palm, he shares the peril, and dejected575Faints o'er the labour unapproved--Alas!Despair and Genius are too oft connected.Within the ages which before me passArt shall resume and equal even the swayWhich with Apelles and old Phidias580She held in Hellas' unforgotten day.Ye shall be taught by Ruin to reviveThe Grecian forms at least from their decay,And Roman souls at last again shall liveIn Roman works wrought by Italian hands,585And temples, loftier than the old temples, giveNew wonders to the World; and while still standsThe austere Pantheon, into heaven shall soarA Dome, its image, while the base expandsInto a fane surpassing all before,590Such as all flesh shall flock to kneel in: ne'erSuch sight hath been unfolded by a doorAs this, to which all nations shall repair,And lay their sins at this huge gate of Heaven.And the bold Architect unto whose care595The daring charge to raise it shall be given,Whom all Arts shall acknowledge as their Lord,Whether into the marble chaos drivenHis chisel bid the Hebrew, at whose wordIsrael left Egypt, stop the waves in stone,600Or hues of Hell be by his pencil pouredOver the damned before the Judgement-throne,Such as I saw them, such as all shall see,Or fanes be built of grandeur yet unknown--The Stream of his great thoughts shall spring from me605The Ghibelline, who traversed the three realmsWhich form the Empire of Eternity.Amidst the clash of swords, and clang of helms,The age which I anticipate, no lessShall be the Age of Beauty, and while whelms610Calamity the nations with distress,The Genius of my Country shall arise,A Cedar towering o'er the Wilderness,Lovely in all its branches to all eyes,Fragrant as fair, and recognised afar,615Wafting its native incense through the skies.Sovereigns shall pause amidst their sport of war,Weaned for an hour from blood, to turn and gazeOn canvass or on stone; and they who marAll beauty upon earth, compelled to praise,620Shall feel the power of that which they destroy;And Art's mistaken gratitude shall raiseTo tyrants, who but take her for a toy,Emblems and monuments, and prostituteHer charms to Pontiffs proud, who but employ625The man of Genius as the meanest bruteTo bear a burthen, and to serve a need,To sell his labours, and his soul to boot.Who toils for nations may be poor indeed,But free; who sweats for Monarchs is no more630Than the gilt Chamberlain, who, clothed and feed,Stands sleek and slavish, bowing at his door.Oh, Power that rulest and inspirest! howIs it that they on earth, whose earthly powerIs likest thine in heaven in outward show,635Least like to thee in attributes divine,Tread on the universal necks that bow,And then assure us that their rights are thine?And how is it that they, the Sons of Fame,Whose inspiration seems to them to shine640From high, they whom the nations oftest name,Must pass their days in penury or pain,Or step to grandeur through the paths of shame,And wear a deeper brand and gaudier chain?Or if their Destiny be born aloof645From lowliness, or tempted thence in vain,In their own souls sustain a harder proof,The inner war of Passions deep and fierce?Florence! when thy harsh sentence razed my roof,I loved thee; but the vengeance of my verse,650The hate of injuries which every yearMakes greater, and accumulates my curse,Shall live, outliving all thou holdest dear--Thy pride, thy wealth, thy freedom, and even that,The most infernal of all evils here,655The sway of petty tyrants in a state;For such sway is not limited to Kings,And Demagogues yield to them but in date,As swept off sooner; in all deadly things,Which make men hate themselves, and one another,660In discord, cowardice, cruelty, all that springsFrom Death the Sin-born's incest with his mother,In rank oppression in its rudest shape,The faction Chief is but the Sultan's brother,And the worst Despot's far less human ape.665Florence! when this lone spirit, which so longYearned, as the captive toiling at escape,To fly back to thee in despite of wrong,An exile, saddest of all prisoners,Who has the whole world for a dungeon strong,670Seas, mountains, and the horizon's verge for bars,Which shut him from the sole small spot of earthWhere--whatsoe'er his fate--he still were hers,His Country's, and might die where he had birth--Florence! when this lone Spirit shall return675To kindred Spirits, thou wilt feel my worth,And seek to honour with an empty urnThe ashes thou shalt ne'er obtain--Alas!"What have I done to thee, my People?" SternAre all thy dealings, but in this they pass680The limits of Man's common malice, forAll that a citizen could be I was--Raised by thy will, all thine in peace or war--And for this thou hast warred with me.--'Tis done:I may not overleap the eternal bar685Built up between us, and will die alone,Beholding with the dark eye of a SeerThe evil days to gifted souls foreshown,Foretelling them to those who will not hear;As in the old time, till the hour be come690When Truth shall strike their eyes through many a tear,And make them own the Prophet in his tomb.