PREFACE
have contained some reference to the attempt of Orsini, which so greatly embarrassed the action of Mazzini and rendered the policy of Sardinia so difficult, besides thrilling Swinburne to the depths of his being.
Everything, on the other hand, points to 1857 as the year in which this ode was composed. Strophe VII, with its strange reference to the "priestly hunters," and the close of Strophe IX, are intelligible only in reference to Cavour's attempts to encourage the Papacy in its efforts, half-hearted enough, to check the violence of Austria and the guilt of Naples. In this connection, the reader of to-day may be surprised to find no acknowledgment of the services of the great "regenerator of Italy." But Swinburne, all through life, was unjust to Cavour, because of his monarchical tendencies, as were at that moment the leaders of "Young Italy," with Mazzini himself at their head. It is observable that the notion of the one and indivisible Republic, which pervades and animates Songs before Sunrise from beginnin to end, is not suggested in the Ode to Mazzini. Swinburne had not yet accepted such an idea; in 1857 his own boyish hopes were bounded, as were the more adult desires of Mazzini, by the frontiers of Italy.
The moment when the ode was written must
xvi.
