Long ago was Gracchus slain;
Brutus perished long ago;
Yet the living roots remain
Whence the shoots of greatness grow;
Yet again,
Godlike men,
Sprung from that heroic stem,
Call the land to rise with them.
They who haunt the swarming street,
They who chase the mountain-boar,
Or, where cliff and billow meet,
Prune the vine or pull the oar,
With a stroke
Break their yoke;
Slaves but yestereve were they —
Freemen with the dawning day.
Looking in his children's eyes,
While his own with gladness flash,
"These," the Umbrian father cries,
"Ne'er shall crouch beneath the lash!
These shall ne'er
Brook to wear
Chains whose cruel links are twined
Round the crushed and withering mind."
Monarchs! ye whose armies stand
Harnessed for the battle-field!
Pause, and from the lifted hand
Drop the bolts of war ye wield.
Stand aloof
While the proof
Of the people's might is given;
Leave their kings to them and Heaven!
Stand aloof, and see the oppressed
Chase the oppressor, pale with fear,
As the fresh winds of the west
Blow the misty valleys clear.
Stand and see
Italy
Cast the gyves she wears no more
To the gulfs that steep her shore.
A DAY-DREAM
A day-dream by the dark-blue deep;
Was it a dream, or something more?
I sat where Posilippo's steep,
With its gray shelves, o'erhung the shore.
On ruined Roman walls around
The poppy flaunted, for 'twas May;
And at my feet, with gentle sound,
Broke the light billows of the bay.
I sat and watched the eternal flow
Of those smooth billows toward the shore,
While quivering lines of light below
Ran with them on the ocean-floor:
Till, from the deep, there seemed to rise
White arms upon the waves outspread,
Young faces, lit with soft blue eyes,
And smooth, round cheeks, just touched with red.
Their long, fair tresses, tinged with gold,
Lay floating on the ocean-streams,
And such their brows as bards behold —
Love-stricken bards – in morning dreams.
Then moved their coral lips; a strain
Low, sweet and sorrowful, I heard,
As if the murmurs of the main
Were shaped to syllable and word.
"The sight thou dimly dost behold,
Oh, stranger from a distant sky!
Was often, in the days of old,
Seen by the clear, believing eye.
"Then danced we on the wrinkled sand,
Sat in cool caverns by the sea,
Or wandered up the bloomy land,
To talk with shepherds on the lea.
"To us, in storms, the seaman prayed,
And where our rustic altars stood,
His little children came and laid
The fairest flowers of field and wood.
"Oh woe, a long, unending woe!
For who shall knit the ties again
That linked the sea-nymphs, long ago,
In kindly fellowship with men?
"Earth rears her flowers for us no more;
A half-remembered dream are we;
Unseen we haunt the sunny shore,