University of Virginia Library

SCENE I.

A Plain in Italy—an ancient Battle-field. Time, Evening.
Persons.—Vittorio Santo, a Missionary of Freedom. He has gone out, disguised as a Monk, to preach the Unity of Italy, the Overthrow of Austrian Domination, and the Restoration of a great Roman Republic.——A number of Youths and Maidens, singing as they dance. ‘The Monk’ is musing.
Enter Dancers.
Dancers.
Sing lowly, foot slowly, oh why should we chase
The hour that gives heaven to this earthly embrace?
To-morrow, to-morrow, is dreary and lonely;
Then love as they love who would live to love only!
Closer yet, eyes of jet,—breasts fair and sweet!
No eyes flash like those eyes that flash as they meet!
Weave brightly, wear lightly, the warm-woven chain,
Love on for to-night if we ne'er love again.
Fond youths! happy maidens! we are not alone!
Bright steps and sweet voices keep pace with our own.
Love-lorn Lusignuolo, the soft-sighing breeze,
The rose with the zephyr, the wind with the trees.
While Heaven, blushing pleasure, is full of love-notes,
Soft down the sweet measure the fairy world floats.

The Monk advances, meets the Dancers, and points to the turf at their feet.
The Monk.
Do you see nothing there,
There, where the unrespective grass grows green,
There at your very feet? Nay, not one step!
'Twould touch it! 'twould profane it! Palsied be
The limb that treads that ground! There is a grave—
There is a grave;—I saw it with these eyes—
A grave! I saw it with these eyes! It holds—
It holds—oh Heaven!—my mother!

One of the Revellers.
Peace, good Padre,
Look to thy beads. The turf is level here.
Comrades! strike up! ‘Sing lowly, foot——’

The Monk.
Who steps,
Steps first on me. I say there is a grave,
I say it is my mother's: that I loved her,
Ay, loved her with more passion than the maddest
Lover among ye clasps his one-day wife!
And I steal forth to keep my twilight vigil,
And you come here to dance upon my heart.
You come and—with the world at will for dalliance,
The whole hot world—deny me that small grave
Whose bitter margin these poor knees know better
Than your accustom'd feet the well-worn path
To your best harlot's bower. The turf is fair!
Have I not kept it green with tears, my mother?
You lustful sons of lax-eyed lewdness, do you
Come here to sing above her bones, and mock me,
Because my flesh and blood cry out, ‘God save them?’
May the Heaven's blight——

One of the Revellers.
Nay, holy father, nay,
We would not harm thee. Be it as thou wilt.
Holy Madonna! there is little dust
In this old land, but has been son or mother
In its own day. What ho! my merry friends,
Come, we must dance upon some other grave.
Farewell, good father!

Another Reveller.
Save you, father!

Another.
Think not,
We would insult thy sorrow.

The Monk.
Well, forgive me.
I pray you listen how I loved my mother,
And you will weep with me. She loved me, nurst me,
And fed my soul with light. Morning and Even
Praying, I sent that soul into her eyes,
And knew what Heaven was though I was a child.
I grew in stature, and she grew in goodness.
I was a grave child; looking on her taught me
To love the beautiful: and I had thoughts
Of Paradise, when other men have hardly
Look'd out of doors on earth. (Alas! alas!
That I have also learn'd to look on earth
When other men see heaven.) I toil'd, but ever
As I became more holy, she seem'd holier;
Even as when climbing mountain-tops the sky
Grows ampler, higher, purer as ye rise.
Let me believe no more. No, do not ask me
How I repaid my mother. O thou saint,
That lookest on me day and night from heaven
And smilest, I have given thee tears for tears,
Anguish for anguish, woe for woe. Forgive me
If, in the spirit of ineffable penance,
In words, I waken up the guilt that sleeps.
Let not the sound afflict thine heaven, or colour
That pale, tear-blotted record which the angels
Keep of my sins. We left her. I and all
The brothers that her milk had fed. We left her—
And strange dark robbers, with unwonted names,
Abused her! bound her! pillaged her! profaned her!
Bound her clasped hands, and gagg'd the trembling lips
That pray'd for her lost children. And we stood
And she knelt to us, and we saw her kneel,
And look'd upon her coldly and denied her!
Denied her in her agony—and counted
Before her sanguine eyes the gold that bought
Her pangs. We stood——

One of the Revellers.
Nay, thou cowl'd ruffian! hold!
There's vengeance for thee yet! Dost thou come here
To blast our hearing with thy damned crimes?
Seize on him, comrades, tear him limb from limb!

The Monk.
Yes, seize him! tear him! tear him! he will bless thee
If thy device can work a deeper pain
Than he will welcome and has suffer'd. Tear him!
But, friends, not yet. Hear her last tortures. Then
Find, if ye can, some direr pang for me.
The Robbers wearied, and they bade us hold her,
Lest her death-struggles should get free. She look'd
Upon me with the face that lit my childhood,
She called me with the voices of old times,
She blest me in her madness. But, they show'd us
Gold, and we seized upon her, held her, bound her,
Smote her. She murmur'd kind words, and I gave her
Blows.

One Auditor.
Fiend!

Another.
Hound!

Another.
Demon!

Another.
Strike him!

Another.
Hold him down!
Kill him for hours!

The Monk.
Why how now, countrymen?
How now, you slaves that should be Romans? Ah!
And you will kill me that I smote my mother?
Well done, well done, a righteous doom! I smote
My mother? Hold! My mother, did I say?
My mother? Mine, yours, ours!

One Auditor.
Seize him.

All.
Die, liar!
Die.

The Monk.
But my brothers—will you seize my brothers?
What! will you let that cursed band escape
That hoard the very gold that slew her? Make
A full end. Finish up the work. You cowards!
What! you can pounce on an unarm'd poor man,
But tremble at the gilded traitors!

All.
Name them!
They shall die! Point them out! where are they?

The Monk.
Here!
You are my brothers. And my mother was
Yours. And each man among you day by day
Takes, bowing, the same price that sold my mother,
And does not blush. Her name is Rome. Look round,
And see those features which the sun himself
Can hardly leave for fondness. Look upon
Her mountain bosom, where the very sky
Beholds with passion: and with the last proud
Imperial sorrow of dejected empire,
She wraps the purple round her outraged breast,
And even in fetters cannot be a slave.
Look on the world's best glory and worst shame.
You cannot count her beauties or her chains,
You cannot know her pangs or her endurance.
You, whom propitious skies may hardly coax
To threescore years and ten. Your giant fathers
Call'd Atlas demigod. But what is she,
Who, worn with eighteen centuries of bondage,
Stands manacled before the world, and bears
Two hemispheres—innumerable wrongs,
Illimitable glories. Oh, thou heart
That art most tortured, look on her and say
If there be any thing in earth or heaven,
In earth or heaven—now that Christ weeps no longer—
So most divinely sad. Look on her. Listen
To all the tongues with which the earth cries out.
Flowers, fountains, winds, woods, spring and summer incense,
Morning and eve—these are her voices—hear them!
Remember how, in the old innocent days
Of your young childhood, these sang blessings on you.
Remember how you danced to those same voices,
And sank down tired, and slept in joy, not doubting
That they would sing to-morrow; and remember
How when some hearts that danced in those old days,
And worn out laid them down, and have not waken'd,
Gave back no answer to the morning sun,
She took them to her mother's breast and still
Holds them unweary, singing by their slumbers,
And though you have forgotten them remembers
To strew their unregarded graves with flowers.
Oh those old days, those canonizèd days!
Oh that bright realm of sublunary heaven,
Wherein they walk'd in haloes of sweet light,
And we look'd up, unfearing, and drew near
And learnt of them what no succeeding times
Can tell us since of joy;—for so, being angels,
They suffer'd little children. Oh those days!
Why is it that we hear them now no more?
And the same destiny that brought us pangs
Took every balsam hence? Did we wake up
From infancy's last slumber in a new
And colder world? My mother, thou shalt answer!
I hear thee—see thee. The same soul informs
The present that look'd once through undimm'd eyes
In Childhood's past. What though it shines through tears?
It shines. What though it speaks with trembling lips,
Tuned to such grief that they say bright words sadly?
It speaks. And by that speech thou art the mother
That bore us! Oh you sons of hers, remember
When joy had grown to passion, and high youth
Had aim'd the shafts that lay in Childhood's quiver,
If you have ever gone out, (and each Roman
Heart must have note of one such better day,)
Full of high thoughts, ambitions, destinies,
And stood, downcast, among her ruin'd altars,
And fed the shameful present with the past;
And felt thy soul on the stern food grow up
To the old Roman stature: and hast started
To feel a hundred nameless things, which Kings
Call sins,—and Patriots, virtues: and self-judged,
Conscious and purple with the glorious treason,
Hast lifted flashing eyes, bold with great futures,
And in one glance challenged her earth, seas, skies,
And they have said, ‘Well Done.’ And thou hast felt
Like a proud child whom a proud mother blesses.
Ah! your brows kindle! What! I have said well?
What! there are some among you who have been
The heroes of an hour? you men of Parma,
What! you were Romans once! you worse than slaves,
Who, being Romans once, are men of Parma!
Tried on the Roman habit, and could wear it
But a short hour on your degenerate limbs!
Sons of the empress of the world, and slaves
To powers a Roman bondman would not count
Upon his fingers on a holiday!
Do not believe me yet. She is no mother,
Who has but nursed your joy and pride. Remember,
If thou hast ever wept without a heart
To catch one tear, and in the lonely anguish
Of thy neglected agony look'd out
On this immortal world, and seen—love-stricken—
Light after light her shadowy joys take up
Thy lorn peculiar sorrow, till thy soul
Seem'd shed upon the universe, and grief,
Deponent of its separate sadness, clung
To the stupendous dolour of all things,
And wept with the great mourner, and smiled with her
When she came back to sunshine—with the joy
Of a young child after the first great grief
Wherein a mother's holy words first spake
To the young heart of God. But I am dreaming;
You have not wept as I have. Yet remember,
If she hath shown you softer signs than these—
If there are none among you who have given
To her chaste beauty, to the woods and mountains,
And lone dim places, sorrowfully sweet,
Where love first learns to hear himself, and blush not—
Thoughts which you would deny me at confession,
Thoughts which, although the peril of a soul
Hung on their utterance, would have gone unborn
In silence down to hell, unblest, unshriven,
And, in despairing coyness, daring all,
Because they could dare nothing. Like the shy
Scared bird, to which the serpent's jaws are better
Than his rude eyes. And yet you gave them to her,
And these same trembling phantasies went forth,
To meet the storms that shake the Apennines,
And did not fear. And so you call'd her mother,
And so the invisible in you confest
The unseen in her; and so you bore your witness
To her august maternity, and she
Reflected back the troth. Remember, so
Great Romulus and those who after him
Built the Eternal City, and their own
Twin-born eternity—even as the workman
Is greater than the work—stood at her knee,
And brighten'd in her blessing; and remember
If they were sons like you! What! can dead names
Stir living blood? Fear not, my countrymen!
They are not German chieftains that I spoke of.
Tremble not, brethren, they are not our lords.
Our lords! they conquered men. They are some souls
That once took flesh and blood in Italy,
And thought it was a land to draw free breath in,
And drew it long, and died here; and since live
Everywhere else. What! your brows darken! what!
I wrong'd you foully; 'twas no fear that daubed them:
What! your cheeks flush as some old soldier's child,
Glows at inglorious ease when a chance tongue
Speaks of the triumph where his father fell!
What then! these dead are yours! Men, what are they?
What are they?—ask the world and it shall answer.
And you? True, true, you have your creed; you tell me
That twice a thousand years have not outworn
The empire in that blood of theirs that flows
In your dull veins. You tell me you are Romans!
Yet they were lords and you are slaves; the earth
Heard them and shook. It shakes, perchance, for you;
Shakes with the laugh of scorn that there are things
Who lick the dust that falls from Austrian feet,
And call the gods their fathers! Bear with me,
I am not here to reckon up your shames,
I will know nothing here but my wrong'd mother.
I cry before heaven she is yours. That you
May kill me for the part I bore, and then
Do judgment on yourselves. Look on that mother
Whose teeming loins peopled with gods and heroes
Earth and Olympus—sold to slaves whose base
Barbarian passions had been proud to swell
In death a Roman pageant. Every limb
Own'd by some separate savage—each charm lent
To some peculiar lust. The form that served
The world for signs of beauty parcell'd out
A carcase on the shambles, where small kings,
Like unclean birds, hang round the expected carrion,
And chaffer for the corpse which shall not die!
Look on that mother and behold her sons!
Alas, she might be Rome if there were Romans!
Look on that mother! Wilt thou know that death
Can have no part in Beauty? Cast to-day
A seed into the earth, and it shall bear thee
The flowers that waved in the Egyptian hair
Of Pharaoh's daughter! Look upon that mother—
Listen, ye slaves, who gaze on her distress,
And turn to dwell with clamorous descant,
And prying eye, on some strange small device
Upon her chains. In no imperial feature,
In no sublime perfection, is she less
Than the world's empress, the earth's paragon,
Except these bonds. These bonds? Break them. Unbind,
Unbind Andromeda! She was not born
To stand and shiver in the northern blast,
Or fester on a foreign rock, or bear
Rude licence of the unrespective waves.
She is a queen! a goddess! a king's daughter!
What though her loveliness defied the heavens;
Unbind her, she shall fill them! Man, unbind her,
And, goddess as she is, she owns thee, loves thee,
Crowns thee! And is there none to break thy chains,
My country? Is there none, sons of my mother?
Strike, and the spell is broken. You behold her
Suppliant of suppliants. Strike! and she shall stand
Forth in her awful beauty, more divine
Than death or mortal sorrow; clothing all
The wrecks and ruins of disastrous days
In old-world glory—even as the first spring
After the deluge. Why should we despair?
The heroes whom your fathers took for gods,
Walk'd in her brightness, and received no more
Than she gives back to you, who are not heroes,
And have not yet been men. They toil'd and bled,
And knew themselves immortal, when they hung
Their names upon her altars; ask'd no fate
But that which you inherit and disdain
To call it heritage—subdued the world,
And with superior scorn heard its lip-service,
And bade it call them Romans, and believe
Earth had no haughtier name. Be not deceived.
They stood on Roman, you on Parman ground,
But yet this mould is the same ground they stood on.
The evening wind, that passes by us now,
To their proud senses was the evening wind.
These are the hills, and these the plains, whereby
The Roman shepherd fed his golden flocks,
And kings look'd from their distant lands, and thought him
Greater than they. The masters of the world
Heard the same streams that speak to you, its slaves.
These rocks were their rocks, and their Roman spring
Brought, year by year, the very self-same blossoms,
(The self-same blossoms, but they stood for crowns.)
The flowers beneath their feet had the same perfume
As those you tread on—do they scorn your tread?
They saw your stars; and when the sun went down,
The mountains on his face set the same signs
To their eyes as to yours. O thou unseen
Rome of their love,—immaculate and free!
Thou who didst sit amid the Apennines,
And looking forth upon the conscious world,
Which heard thee and obey'd, beheld thy children
From sea to sea! Yes, we are here, my mother,
And here beside thy mountain throne we call thee,
Ascend, thou uncrown'd queen! Yet a few days,
Yet a few days, and all is past. Behold
Even now, the harvest seedeth, and the ear
Bends rich with death. Yet a few days, my mother,
And thou shalt hear the shouting of the reapers,
And we who sharp the sickle shall ring out
The harvest-home. Nay, look not on me, mother,
Look not on me in thy sublime despair;
Thou shalt be free! I see it all, my mother,
Thy golden fetters, thy profanèd limbs,
Thy toils, thy stripes, thine agonies, thy scars,
And thine undying beauty. Yes, all, all,
And all for us and by us. Look not on me.
Ay! lift thy canker'd hands to heaven, earth hath not
Room for so vast a wrong. Thou shalt be free,
Thou shalt be free, before the heavens I swear it!
By thy long agony, thy bloody sweat,
Thy passion of a thousand years, thy glory,
Thy pride, thy shame, thy worlds subdued and lost,
Thou shalt be free! By thine eternal youth,
And co-eternal utterless dishonour—
Past, present, future, life and death, all oaths,
Which may bind earth and heaven, mother, I swear it.
We know we have dishonour'd thee. We know
All thou canst tell the angels. At thy feet,
The feet where kings have trembled, we confess,
And weep; and only bid thee live, my mother,
To see how we can die. Thou shalt be free!
By all our sins, and all thy wrongs we swear it.
We swear it, mother, by the thousand omens
That heave this pregnant time. Tempests for whom
The Alps lack wombs—quick earthquakes—hurricanes
That moan and chafe, and thunder for the light,
And must be native here. Hark, hark, the angel!
I see the birthday in the imminent skies!
Clouds break in fire. Earth yawns. The exulting thunder
Shouts havoc to the whirlwinds. And men hear,
Amid the terrors of consenting storms,
Floods, rocking worlds, mad seas and rending mountains,
Above the infinite clash, one long great cry,
Thou shalt be free!

[The audience have one by one stolen away. The Monk, recovering from his enthusiasm, finds himself alone.
The Monk.
Ah solitude! and have I
Raved to the winds?

[A pause.
[Another long pause.
[Another long pause.
[Another pause.
[Another pause.
[A long pause.
[A very long pause.