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1849 to 1856.
All over! It was nobly striven;What use against all earth and heaven?
So, into bitter exile driven,
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All that story, yet half-told,
Of danger strange and manifold,
Thirst and hunger, heat and cold,
Wanderings wild by field and flood,
Deeds of daring, wounds and blood,
In peril and in pain.
Often into prisons cast,
Yet no bonds could hold thee fast;
From their hands escap'd and past,
And forward once again.
Through the snares set in thy path,
Baffling all an empire's wrath;
From city unto city forth,
Calling men to rise and arm,
By the mighty power and charm
Of thy presence and thy name,
Keeping still the spark aflame,
Stirring life where'er they came.
And high hope upbore thee still,
Thy great mission to fulfil;
Nothing might dismay or chill,
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Thy honour and thy love betray'd—
The foul and faithless wrong that made
Thy heart and home so desolate. —
Lifelong shadow o'er thee thrown,
A wound that will not heal:—
Heartsick and reckless, thou art gone
On desperate errand all alone—
Unto none thy purpose shown—
None bidding thee farewell.
Thou, the hunted and the bann'd,
Into the heart of the strange land,
Darest, with wild purpose plann'd,
To raise it with thy single hand.
Taken at last! and by a foe
Never with life will let thee go:
Too deep and deadly debt they owe;
Thou knowest what to look for now.
All thy sufferings ever told,
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Fever, famine, freezing cold,
Their utmost malice wreak'd on thee,
Entreated so despitefully,
The very gaolers wept to see
Thy patience and thy misery.
And thou, as darker clos'd thy fate,
Rising more glorious and great:
Standing before thy judges,
No friend or witness nigh,
Pallid and feverstricken,
But the proud light in thine eye—
‘Ye have your chains and tortures,
And I have heart to die.’
The heavy chains, the damp, dark cell,
In the Mantua citadel;
The weary waiting for thy doom,
Alone within that living tomb;
The hope that flash'd on thy despair,
The deed that only thou couldst dare,
That terrible midnight, that wild tale
That froze our cheeks long after pale,
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Our hearts within us shrink and quail,
Only thine might never fail;
It reads not like the deeds of men;
God and the angels were with thee then!
On the fall of the Roman republic, Orsini retired to Nice. For several years he resided there at intervals; most of his time being spent in organising insurrections in Lombardy and Tuscany. Once during this period he was obliged to take refuge in England.
‘I had been robbed of my happiness, and was yet unrevenged on the destroyer. I shall find him yet.’ ‘The hope before I die to stand face to face with the traitor who has so foully wronged me.’—Orsini's Memoirs.
Orsini, in December 1854, travelled alone through Hungary, Austria, and Transylvania, on a revolutionary mission whose import he never fully revealed.
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