Brother Fabian's Manuscript :: :: University of Virginia Library

Happy be the gales that waft thee, Bark that bearest o'er the sea,
Prophet,—aye and more than prophet of Italia One and Free!—
Welcome, Joseph Garibaldi! With all praise of tongue and pen,
Welcome, welcome with all honour, with all love of all true men;

Garibaldi!—As I name thee, from the backward past of time
Flash the shapes of old-world Manhood,—shapes of old-world Faith sublime;

190

Awful shadows of thy brethren, gazing on me as I gaze,
Demigods and stately Visions of the dim heroic days.

And I see among the Visions, where in Lemnos isle untrod,
One foot-stricken Philoctetes wields the arrows of a god;
Wastes the weary years in sorrow, while afar the Chiefs of Troy
Laughing proudly on the leaguers, bid them enter and destroy.

And I hear the Prophet whisper: “Hark, Achaians, would ye speed,
Go, fetch hither Philoctetes: he alone can do this deed.
His alone the fateful arrows, tempered in Lernæan gore:—
Let him come, Alcides' comrade, and Troy town shall be no more!”

191

And I see a false Ulysses, with a hate-dissembling guile,
Urging forth the stricken Hero to the leaguer from his isle,
And the warrior from the meshes of his falsehood bursting free,
To the gods' will grandly yielding, and the Fate, whate'er it be.

And again once more I see him, waxing whole of his deep wound,
Watch the triumph of his arrows, see all Troy a blazing mound;
And beyond the blaze and triumph, and the War-god's glorious ills,
See him girt with peaceful peoples, on the free Calabrian hills!

Thou thrice-nobler Philoctetes! Is thy foot-wound not yet whole?

192

Solferino's new Ulysses—hath he loved thee to cajole?
Through and through our welcome ringing, o'er a fallen Troy we hear
The last curses of Mastäi, Antonelli's dying sneer!