The bird and the bell, with other poems

Nor honor less, nor praise
To her whose later days
Were pledged to lift wronged Justice to her seat.
And though Rome's new-lit torch
Blew backward, but to scorch

168

The hand that held it, dropping at her feet,
Quenched in the patriots' blood, not incomplete
Her task, though all the heroic strains she sang
To chronicle a struggling nation's pang—
The records of the strife
That agonized its life—
Were strewn upon the wind like withered flowers,
And gulfed in roaring floods,—Italia's loss, and ours!

Alas! how could we with our lamp of hope
Read thy perplexed and darkened horoscope?
How could we know, when Destiny's great loom
Thy life's most precious threads inwove
With all love's rich embroidery of love,
That its bright tissue held the shade
Of death across the golden braid,—
The inevitable woof of death and tragic doom!
When ties were sweetest, dearest;
When love, when hope, were nearest;
When eyes grew bright to greet thee;
When arms were stretched to meet thee;
When all thy life was flowering
As in a garden home,—
The storm beyond was lowering,
The end of all was come!

169

I seem to hear
The grand, sweet music of that earnest life,
Grander and sweeter in its later strife,
Stop, suddenly drowned amid the tempest drear.
I hear that harp whose strings,
Whose delicate, thoughtful strings should well have played
Some hopeful melody of woods and springs;
Some high heroic march
Beneath a Roman arch;
Some lofty strain that made
The soul flush to its sharing
The soldier's toil and daring,—
Swept, like a wind-harp to wild agony
By bitter winds of destiny;
Then, musical no more,
Dead, mute, and shattered on the lonely shore!

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