That raised and gave thee life to run and leap When thou wast full of sleep, That touched and stung thee with young blood and breath When thou wast hard on death. Praise him, O all her cities and her crowns, Her towers and thrones of towns; O noblest Brescia, scarred from foot to head And breast-deep in thy dead, Praise him from all the glories of thy graves That yellow Mela laves With gentle and golden water, whose fair flood Ran wider with thy blood: Praise him, O born of that heroic breast, O nursed thereat and blest, Verona, fairer than thy mother fair, But not more brave to bear: Praise him, O Milan, whose imperial tread Bruised once the German head; Whose might, by northern swords left desolate, Set foot on fear and fate: Praise him, O long mute mouth of melodies, Mantua, with louder keys, With mightier chords of music even than rolled From the large harps of old, When thy sweet singer of golden throat and tongue, Praising his tyrant, sung; Though now thou sing not as of other days, Learn late a better praise. Not with the sick sweet lips of slaves that sing, Praise thou no priest or king, No brow-bound laurel of discoloured leaf, But him, the crownless chief. Praise him, O star of sun-forgotten times, Among their creeds and crimes That wast a fire of witness in the night, Padua, the wise men's light: Praise him, O sacred Venice, and the sea That now exults through thee, Full of the mighty morning and the sun, Free of things dead and done; Praise him from all the years of thy great grief, That shook thee like a leaf With winds and snows of torment, rain that fell Red as the rains of hell, Storms of black thunder and of yellow flame, And all ill things but shame; Praise him with all thy holy heart and strength; Through thy walls' breadth and length Praise him with all thy people, that their voice Bid the strong soul rejoice, The fair clear supreme spirit beyond stain, Pure as the depth of pain, High as the head of suffering, and secure As all things that endure. More than thy blind lord of an hundred years Whose name our memory hears, Home-bound from harbours of the Byzantine Made tributary of thine, Praise him who gave no gifts from oversea, But gave thyself to thee. O mother Genoa, through all years that run, More than that other son, Who first beyond the seals of sunset prest Even to the unfooted west, Whose back-blown flag scared from, their sheltering seas The unknown Atlantides, And as flame climbs through cloud and vapour clomb Through streams of storm and foam, Till half in sight they saw land heave and swim--