Siena

Inside this northern summer's foldThe fields are full of naked gold,Broadcast from heaven on lands it loves;The green veiled air is full of doves;Soft leaves that sift the sunbeams let5Light on the small warm grasses wetFall in short broken kisses sweet,And break again like waves that beatRound the sun's feet.

But I, for all this English mirth10Of golden-shod and dancing days,And the old green-girt sweet-hearted earth,Desire what here no spells can raise.Far hence, with holier heavens above,The lovely city of my love15Bathes deep in the sun-satiate airThat flows round no fair thing more fairHer beauty bare.

There the utter sky is holier, thereMore pure the intense white height of air,20More clear men's eyes that mine would meet,And the sweet springs of things more sweet.There for this one warm note of dovesA clamour of a thousand lovesStorms the night's ear, the day's assails,25From the tempestuous nightingales,And fills, and fails.

O gracious city well-beloved,Italian, and a maiden crowned,Siena, my feet are no more moved30Toward thy strange-shapen mountain-bound:But my heart in me turns and moves,O lady loveliest of my loves,Toward thee, to lie before thy feetAnd gaze from thy fair fountain-seat35Up the sheer street;

And the house midway hanging seeThat saw Saint Catherine bodily,Felt on its floors her sweet feet move,And the live light of fiery love40Burn from her beautiful strange face,As in the sanguine sacred placeWhere in pure hands she took the headSevered, and with pure lips still redKissed the lips dead.45

For years through, sweetest of the saints,In quiet without cease she wrought,Till cries of men and fierce complaintsFrom outward moved her maiden thought;And prayers she heard and sighs toward France,50"God, send us back deliverance,Send back thy servant, lest we die!"With an exceeding bitter cryThey smote the sky.

Then in her sacred saving hands55She took the sorrows of the lands,With maiden palms she lifted upThe sick time's blood-embittered cup,And in her virgin garment furledThe faint limbs of a wounded world.60Clothed with calm love and clear desire,She went forth in her soul's attire,A missive fire.

Across the might of men that stroveIt shone, and over heads of kings;65And molten in red flames of loveWere swords and many monstrous things;And shields were lowered, and snapt were spears,And sweeter-tuned the clamorous years;And faith came back, and peace, that were70Fled; for she bade, saying, "Thou, God's heir,Hast thou no care?

"Lo, men lay waste thine heritageStill, and much heathen people rageAgainst thee, and devise vain things.75What comfort in the face of kings,What counsel is there? Turn thine eyesAnd thine heart from them in like wise;Turn thee unto thine holy placeTo help us that of God for grace80Require thy face.

"For who shall hear us if not thouIn a strange land? what doest thou there?Thy sheep are spoiled, and the ploughers ploughUpon us; why hast thou no care85For all this, and beyond strange hillsLiest unregardful what snow chillsThy foldless flock, or what rains beat?Lo, in thine ears, before thy feet,Thy lost sheep bleat.90

"And strange men feed on faultless lives,And there is blood, and men put knives,Shepherd, unto the young lamb's throat;And one hath eaten, and one smote,And one had hunger and is fed95Full of the flesh of these, and redWith blood of these as who drinks wineAnd God knoweth, who hath sent thee a sign,If these were thine."

But the Pope's heart within him burned,100So that he rose up, seeing the sign,And came among them; but she turnedBack to her daily way divine,And fed her faith with silent things,And lived her life with curbed white wings,105And mixed herself with heaven and died:And now on the sheer city-sideSmiles like a bride.

You see her in the fresh clear gloom,Where walls shut out the flame and bloom110Of full-breathed summer, and the roofKeeps the keen ardent air aloofAnd sweet weight of the violent sky:There bodily beheld on high,She seems as one hearing in tune115Heaven within heaven, at heaven's full noon,In sacred swoon:

A solemn swoon of sense that achesWith imminent blind heat of heaven,While all the wide-eyed spirit wakes,120Vigilant of the supreme Seven,Whose choral flames in God's sight move,Made unendurable with love,That without wind or blast of breathCompels all things through life and death125Whither God saith.

There on the dim side-chapel wallThy mighty touch memorial,Razzi, raised up, for ages dead,And fixed for us her heavenly head:130And, rent with plaited thorn and rod,Bared the live likeness of her GodTo men's eyes turning from strange lands,Where, pale from thine immortal hands,Christ wounded stands;135

And the blood blots his holy hairAnd white brows over hungering eyesThat plead against us, and the fairMute lips forlorn of words or sighsIn the great torment that bends down140His bruised head with the bloomless crown,White as the unfruitful thorn-flower,A God beheld in dreams that wereBeheld of her.

In vain on all these sins and years145Falls the sad blood, fall the slow tears;In vain poured forth as watersprings,Priests, on your altars, and ye, kings,About your seats of sanguine gold;Still your God, spat upon and sold,150Bleeds at your hands; but now is goneAll his flock from him saving one;Judas alone.

Surely your race it was that he,O men signed backward with his name,155Beholding in GethsemaneBled the red bitter sweat of shame,Knowing how the word of Christian shouldMean to men evil and not good,Seem to men shameful for your sake,160Whose lips, for all the prayers they make,Man's blood must slake.

But blood nor tears ye love not, youThat my love leads my longing to,Fair as the world's old faith of flowers,165O golden goddesses of ours!From what Idalian rose-pleasanceHath Aphrodite bidden glanceThe lovelier lightnings of your feet?From what sweet Paphian sward or seat170Led you more sweet?

O white three sisters, three as one,With flowerlike arms for flowery bandsYour linked limbs glitter like the sun,And time lies beaten at your hands.175Time and wild years and wars and menPass, and ye care not whence or when;With calm lips over sweet for scorn,Ye watch night pass, O children bornOf the old-world morn.180

Ah, in this strange and shrineless place,What doth a goddess, what a Grace,Where no Greek worships her shrined limbsWith wreaths and Cytherean hymns?Where no lute makes luxurious185The adoring airs in Amathus,Till the maid, knowing her mother near,Sobs with love, aching with sweet fear?What do ye here?

For the outer land is sad, and wears190A raiment of a flaming fire;And the fierce fruitless mountain stairsClimb, yet seem wroth and loth to aspire,Climb, and break, and are broken down,And through their clefts and crests the town195Looks west and sees the dead sun lie,In sanguine death that stains the skyWith angry dye.

And from the war-worn wastes withoutIn twilight, in the time of doubt,200One sound comes of one whisper, whereMoved with low motions of slow airThe great trees nigh the castle swingIn the sad coloured evening;"Ricorditi di me, che son205La Pia"--that small sweet word aloneIs not yet gone.

"Ricorditi di me"--the soundSole out of deep dumb days remoteAcross the fiery and fatal ground210Comes tender as a hurt bird's noteTo where, a ghost with empty hands,A woe-worn ghost, her palace standsIn the mid city, where the strongBells turn the sunset air to song,215And the towers throng.

With other face, with speech the same,A mightier maiden's likeness cameLate among mourning men that slept,A sacred ghost that went and wept,220White as the passion-wounded Lamb,Saying, "Ah, remember me, that amItalia." (From deep sea to seaEarth heard, earth knew her, that this was she.)"Ricorditi.225

"Love made me of all things fairest thing,And Hate unmade me; this knows heWho with God's sacerdotal ringEnringed mine hand, espousing me."Yea, in thy myriad-mooded woe,230Yea, Mother, hast thou not said so?Have not our hearts within us stirred,O thou most holiest, at thy word?Have we not heard?

As this dead tragic land that she235Found deadly, such was time to thee;Years passed thee withering in the redMaremma, years that deemed thee dead,Ages that sorrowed or that scorned;And all this while though all they mourned240Thou sawest the end of things unclean,And the unborn that should see thee a queen.Have we not seen?

The weary poet, thy sad son,Upon thy soil, under thy skies,245Saw all Italian things save one -Italia; this thing missed his eyes;The old mother-might, the breast, the face,That reared, that lit the Roman race;This not Leopardi saw; but we,250What is it, Mother, that we see,What if not thee?

Look thou from Siena southward home,Where the priest's pall hangs rent on Rome,And through the red rent swaddling-bands255Towards thine she strains her labouring hands.Look thou and listen, and let beAll the dead quick, all the bond free;In the blind eyes let there be sight;In the eighteen centuries of the night260Let there be light.

Bow down the beauty of thine head,Sweet, and with lips of living breathKiss thy sons sleeping and thy dead,That there be no more sleep or death.265Give us thy light, thy might, thy love,Whom thy face seen afar aboveDrew to thy feet; and when, being free,Thou hast blest thy children born to thee,Bless also me.270

Me that when others played or sleptSat still under thy cross and wept;Me who so early and unawareFelt fall on bent bared brows and hair(Thin drops of the overflowing flood!)275The bitter blessing of thy blood;The sacred shadow of thy pain,Thine, the true maiden-mother, slainAnd raised again.

Me consecrated, if I might,280To praise thee, or to love at least,O mother of all men's dear delight,Thou madest a choral-souled boy-priest,Before my lips had leave to sing,Or my hands hardly strength to cling285About the intolerable treeWhereto they had nailed my heart and theeAnd said, "Let be."

For to thee too the high Fates gaveGrace to be sacrificed and save,290That being arisen, in the equal sun,God and the People should be one;By those red roads thy footprints trod,Man more divine, more human God,Saviour; that where no light was known295But darkness, and a daytime flown,Light should be shown.

Let there be light, O Italy!For our feet falter in the night.O lamp of living years to be,300O light of God, let there be light!Fill with a love keener than flameMen sealed in spirit with thy name,The cities and the Roman skies,Where men with other than man's eyes305Saw thy sun rise.

For theirs thou wast and thine were theyWhose names outshine thy very day;For they are thine and theirs thou artWhose blood beats living in man's heart,310Remembering ages fled and deadWherein for thy sake these men bled;They that saw Trebia, they that seeMentana, they in years to beThat shall see thee.315

For thine are all of us, and oursThou; till the seasons bring to birthA perfect people, and all the powersBe with them that bear fruit on earth;Till the inner heart of man be one320With freedom, and the sovereign sun;And Time, in likeness of a guide,Lead the Republic as a brideUp to God's side.