Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/209

Nor Dante, from gate Gallo—still we know,
Despite the razing of the blazonries,
Remains the consecration of the shield,
The dead heroic faces will start out
On all these gates, if foes should take the field,
And blend sublimely, at the earliest shout,
With our live fighters, who will scorn to yield
A hair's-breadth ev'n, when, gazing round about,
They find in what a glorious company
They fight the foes of Florence! Who will grudge
His one poor life, when that great man we see,
Has given five hundred years, the world being judge,
To help the glory of his Italy?
Who, born the fair side of the Alps, will budge,
When Dante stays, when Ariosto stays,
When Petrarch stays, for ever? Ye bring swords,
My Tuscans? Why, if wanted in this haze,
Bring swords, but first bring souls!—bring thoughts and words
Unrusted by a tear of yesterday's,
Yet awful by its wrong, and cut these cords
And mow this green lush falseness to the roots,
And shut the mouth of hell below the swathe!
And if ye can bring songs too, let the lute's
Recoverable music softly bathe
Some poet's hand, that, through all bursts and bruits
Of popular passion—all unripe and rathe
Convictions of the popular intellect—
Ye may not lack a finger up the air,
Annunciative, reproving, pure, erect,
To show whieh way your first Ideal bare
The whiteness of its wings, when, sorely pecked