Whatever hand shall grasp this oriflamme, Whatever man (last peasant or first pope Seeking to free his country) shall appear, Teach, lead, strike fire into the masses, fill These empty bladders with fine air, insphere These wills into a unity of will, And make of Italy a nation--dear And blessed be that man! the Heavens shall kill No leaf the earth lets grow for him, and Death Shall cast him back upon the lap of Life To live more surely, in a clarion-breath Of hero-music. Brutus with the knife, Rienzi with the fasces, throb beneath Rome's stones,--and more who threw away joy's fife Like Pallas, that the beauty of their souls Might ever shine untroubled and entire: But if it can be true that he who rolls The Church's thunders will reserve her fire For only light,--from eucharistic bowls Will pour new life for nations that expire, And rend the scarlet of his papal vest To gird the weak loins of his countrymen,-- I hold that he surpasses all the rest Of Romans, heroes, patriots; and that when He sat down on the throne, he dispossessed The first graves of some glory. See again, This country-saving is a glorious thing: And if a common man achieved it? well. Say, a rich man did? excellent. A king? That grows sublime. A priest? improbable. A pope? Ah, there we stop, and cannot bring Our faith up to the leap, with history's bell So heavy round the neck of it--albeit We fain would grant the possibility For _thy_ sake, Pio Nono! Stretch thy feet In that case--I will kiss them reverently As any pilgrim to the papal seat: And, such proved possible, thy throne to me Shall seem as holy a place as Pellico's Venetian dungeon, or as Spielberg's grate At which the Lombard woman hung the rose Of her sweet soul by its own dewy weight, To feel the dungeon round her sunshine close, And pining so, died early, yet too late For what she suffered. Yea, I will not choose Betwixt thy throne, Pope Pius, and the spot Marked red for ever, spite of rains and dews, Where Two fell riddled by the Austrian's shot, The brothers Bandiera, who accuse, With one same mother-voice and face (that what They speak may be invincible) the sins Of earth's tormentors before God the just, Until the unconscious thunderbolt begins To loosen in His grasp. And yet we must Beware, and mark the natural kiths and kins Of circumstance and office, and distrust The rich man reasoning in a poor man's hut, The poet who neglects pure truth to prove Statistic fact, the child who leaves a rut For a smoother road, the priest who vows his glove Exhales no grace, the prince who walks afoot, The woman who has sworn she will not love, And this Ninth Pius in Seventh Gregory's chair, With Andrea Doria's forehead!