Fra Dolcino, and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Oh, only love! thou gav'st me this sweet pause
To train me how to love and aid thee best,
To fit my womanhood for sterner laws
Than build the birdmate's nest.
A pause but not a close—with whisper deep
Duty dissolves Love's Eden of a day;
On lids long troubles have weighed down to sleep,
Sharp smites the kindling ray.

But smite it does—the fairy land is gone,
Old haunts and kindred lives rise round us fast;
So be this foreign love-dream left upon
The pillow of the past.
Thy people calls to thee, the brotherhood
Wanders unfathered now; for Sagarelli
Hath sealed his gentle madness with his blood—
They need thee in Vercelli.

Milano calls; the friends who yearn for thee,
And, with thee, for the vision bending down,
Yet leaving not the skies, till there shall be
One Italy, one crown.

Behold, they say, the prophecies converge
From cloud to lightning,—heaven is all alight,
Red with foreshadowed war,—be thou, they urge,
The trumpet of the fight.

'Tis true the trumpet may be silenced ere
Those whom it leads have gained an inch of ground;
For first he falls, who first alone shall dare
Rouse foes couched all round.
And am I brave enough to doom thee so,
I, all so happy once? am I resigned
To worship at thy grave who hast lived to show
Me crowned above my kind?

Can I believe, for whom thou wert life's sun,
Earth will be brighter for that sun's eclipse?
That the great tide will roll more freely on,
O'er wrecks of noblest ships?
It matters not—the way is dark, but straight;
Twins are my love and pride; I wedded thee,
Thee and thy greatness; work thou out thy fate,
Then—oh call soon for me!”

He comes to fling that new-enriched life
On the great altar, nor comes he alone;
The light soft hand that waved him to the strife
Is welded to his own.
Yet strife he brings not, flapping not aloft,
A storm-bird with harsh cry, but like the swallow,
With summer on its wings, and piping soft,
For fuller songs to follow.

But in his children burned Saint Dominic,
A frenzy in their blood; and cowled hate
Gnashed dragon-teeth at him, the heretic,
Who stormed their sacred gate.
Thrice in their gripe he fell, and thrice God's arm
Withdrew him for the work that was to reach
To lives yet ages off—either a charm
Of subtly-moving speech,

Or lingering love of some who once had held
The Fra Dolcino first and best of men,
The willing martyr loosed, the glimpse dispelled
Of heaven within his ken.
So from the city life and peopled plains,
O'erawed by crosier, filled with priestly feet,
And eyes cowl-shadowed, as with blood the veins,
He turned for some retreat.

The summer richness round Vercelli laid,
Where battled walls like a dark ring of shields
Lock in the town, from happy breadths of shade
Severed, and shining fields,
Whose seas of grass are streaked with streams that roll
Diamonds from clefts in Alpine marble rent,
Thence trickling into verdure: these his soul
Felt like a banishment.

Leaving those sunny levels then, he tracked
Safety and liberty up lawless vales,
Where only Nature's wrath those mountain-backed
And sullen haunts assails,

Castle or den, wherein amid the rocks
To all foiled outcasts from the pastures driven
By stronger herds, or singly or in flocks,
Uneasy footing's given.

There did the haughty Ghibeline chieftain—couched
Outside the tamed Vercelli in his pride,
And from his fortress like a dragon crouched
And curled by Sesia's side,
Flinging grim scorn at all nets woven for
Body or soul—to Fra Dolcino call:
“What! art thou outlawed, hunted down, at war
With slaves and tyrants all?

“Welcome to Robiallo! See unrolled
The Biandrate's banner o'er thy head,
To warn the Guelphs off from the prey I hold
Safe where they dare not tread.”
But clipped were Biandrate's eagle-wings,
And foes were busy; lowlier friends, yet brave
As any noble, and from deeper springs,
A surer refuge gave.