Destruction for a dowry--this to see And feel, and know without repair, hath taught A bitter lesson; but it leaves me free: I have not vilely found, nor basely sought, They made an Exile--not a Slave of me. CANTO THE SECOND. The Spirit of the fervent days of Old, When words were things that came to pass, and Thought Flashed o'er the future, bidding men behold Their children's children's doom already brought Forth from the abyss of Time which is to be, The Chaos of events, where lie half-wrought Shapes that must undergo mortality; What the great Seers of Israel wore within, That Spirit was on them, and is on me, And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din 10 Of conflict none will hear, or hearing heed This voice from out the Wilderness, the sin Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed, The only guerdon I have ever known. Hast thou not bled? and hast thou still to bleed, Italia? Ah! to me such things, foreshown With dim sepulchral light, bid me forget In thine irreparable wrongs my own; We can have but one Country, and even yet Thou'rt mine--my bones shall be within thy breast, 20 My Soul within thy language, which once set With our old Roman sway in the wide West; But I will make another tongue arise As lofty and more sweet, in which expressed The hero's ardour, or the lover's sighs, Shall find alike such sounds for every theme That every word, as brilliant as thy skies, Shall realise a Poet's proudest dream, And make thee Europe's Nightingale of Song;[295] So that all present speech to thine shall seem 30 The note of meaner birds, and every tongue Confess its barbarism when compared with thine.[bz] This shalt thou owe to him thou didst so wrong, Thy Tuscan bard, the banished Ghibelline. Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries Is rent,--a thousand years which yet supine Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise, Heaving in dark and sullen undulation, Float from Eternity into these eyes; The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station, 40 The unborn Earthquake yet is in the womb, The bloody Chaos yet expects Creation, But all things are disposing for thy doom; The Elements await but for the Word, "Let there be darkness!" and thou grow'st a tomb! Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword,[296] Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise, Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored: Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice? Thou, Italy! whose ever golden fields, 50 Ploughed by the sunbeams solely, would suffice For the world's granary; thou, whose sky Heaven gilds[ca] With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue;