University of Virginia Library

IV

Therefore, O Latin barrier, when day breaks,
Far as your sea-republics and faint shapes,
Floating islands, divine cities luminous,
Defiant nursed under the Rhaetian capes,
We, strangers, fast in spirit your allies—
Have you not framed, have you not founded us?—
Now will take counsel of your heads of white,
Snowy conclave of the arena bounded
By the Alps, the amphitheatre of peaks;
Pelasgian and Ligurian hear,—sea-races
Still surging, murmuring, creating, round your bases
Since Pytheas joined them to the Orcades;
That, when the silver tubes of Dawn are sounded
Over Sesia and the shining tributaries,
Congiora and the tribes of promontories,
From Resegone to the Graian wall—
Padua to Monte Viso—when outleap
Cataracts of pure fire into the lakes,
And eyelids of the land Hesperia
Uplift, we also may shake off our sleep,
Put off the dark barbaric spell,
Arise, and thinking of the risen glow
When Hellas thrilled with rays the vine of night
Hesperia, watch her great plains boil with light,
As an olive holds her wide cup to the sun
In endless battle-furrows of that glebe:
And stand to hearken what yon silent say,
Tongues of white fire, immarcescible;
And grow to calm, if calm may be attained
And clear-soul'd Justice from on high be deigned.