University of Virginia Library

XI.

Yet tarried a few in the city whose hearts not yet would allow
All ended they strove for so bravely, but haply, they deemed, even now
Some chance might arise unreckoned to spring on the foe secure
And hurl him to dust from his triumph, some vengeance sudden and sure.
And there with those sad stern hearts one sadder and sterner than all,
Mazzini, waited in silence if haply such chance should befall.
Freely he went and came, and moved in the light of the day,
But none laid hand on his freedom or lifted weapon to slay.
Seven days he tarried in vain, and then, when all hope was fled,
Went forth from the sorrowful city that mourned for her freedom dead.
Northward and westward he fared, and made for the Tyrrhene strand
Right on thro' the wild Campagna, the fateful feverous land.
Farther and farther he fared, till only the world-famed Dome,
Bathed in the splendour of even, could speak to his sorrow of Rome.
Then he laid him down in the twilight, amidst of the perilous plain,
And yielded his eyelids to sleep, and forgot for a little his pain;
And a wind from the wild Campagna, the plague-vext pasture and fen,
Moaned round the people's shepherd, the leader and prophet of men.
But lo, in his dreams as he slumbered the firmament rolled away,
Lost in an ampler arch and a dawn of diviner day;
And it seemed as the tenth heaven opened, all heights of the heavens above,
Moved as a wheel that is moved by the might of ineffable Love;
And a Presence divine possest him, a silence fell thro' his soul,
And he seemed as himself no longer, but merged in an infinite whole;
Then slowly his sense came back, but returning seemed it to be
As though the old life were a dream, and the dream reality:
And a murmur fell thro' the air, as an angel's message it seemed,
And spake to the people's shepherd;—he smiled at the voice as he dreamed:
‘Lo this for thy heart, this word, O loved one, O lover of men;
When the long-lost light shall arise, and the gloom shall be lifted again,
When the golden yearspring shall dawn, completing the secular sum,
In the hour of the great resurrection, the life of the world to come,
There shall live in the glow of that sunrise the glow of thy brief sun set,
And the risen shall long for the fall'n, nor the unforgetting forget.’
Thus spake that voice, and was silent; the phantasy fled from his brain,
And he rose in the dawn from his slumber, unhurt of the feverous plain;
And he journeyed on to the sea and entered a ship on the strand
Bound for Massilian wharves, for a port of the strangers' land;
And they loosed the ship from her mooring and spread her sails to the wind,
For a breeze from the mounting sun was arisen and blew from behind:
So the bright waves bare him along, and the shores of his Italy
Faded away from his eyes, as the swift ship sped thro' the sea.