Classic Poem

Part One

I heard last night a little child go singing
'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,
O bella liberta, O bella! stringing
The same words still on notes he went in search
So high for, you concluded the upspringing
Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch
Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green,
And that the heart of Italy must beat,
While such a voice had leave to rise serene
'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street!
A little child, too, who not long had been
By mother's finger steadied on his feet,
And still O bella liberta he sang.

Then I thought, musing, of the innumerous
Sweet songs which still for Italy outrang
From older singers' lips, who sang not thus
Exultingly and purely, yet, with pang
Fast sheathed in music, touched the heart of us
So finely, that the pity scarcely pained.
I thought how Filicaja led on others,
Bewailers for their Italy enchained,
And how they called her childless among mothers,
Widow of empires, ay, and scarce refrained
Cursing her beauty to her face, as brothers
Might a shamed sister's, — " Had she been less fair
She were less wretched," — how, evoking so
From congregated wrong and heaped despair
Of men and women writhing under blow,
Harrowed and hideous in a filthy lair,
Some personating Image, wherein woe
Was wrapt in beauty from offending much,
They called it Cybele, or Niobe,
Or laid it corpse-like on a bier for such,
Where all the world might drop for Italy
Those cadenced tears which burn not where they touch, —
" Juliet of nations, canst thou die as we?
And was the violet crown that crowned thy head
So over-large, though new buds made it rough,
It slipped down and across thine eyelids dead,
O sweet, fair Juliet?" Of such songs enough,
Too many of such complaints! behold, instead,
Void at Verona, Juliet's marble trough.
As void as that is, are all images
Men set between themselves and actual wrong,
To catch the weight of pity, meet the stress
Of conscience, — since 'tis easier to gaze long
On mournful masks, and sad effigies,
Than on real, live, weak creatures crushed by strong.