Auspicious planet to his realm restored.
He, by endowing the Sebezia,
Seemed patron of our country’s intellect;
So that I frequently heard men proclaim—
“Demon he went, and angel he returned.”
But who can ever change the human soul?
He in reverting saw us evermore
As liegemen to himself or to Murat:
The first he greeted with a cheerful mien,
And for the second nursed a secret grudge.
Brothers with brothers he did not unite,
As should have been effected from the first
All the best posts were given away to these,
Though oftentimes unjust and ignorant;
Those others were neglected and depressed,
However honourable and well-informed.
A victim I of such partiality,
Of which the proofs could day by day be seen;
What was my due he gave to some one else.
When Naples to their palace had beheld
From Sicily return the unrighteous court,
In her most famous University
The chair of Eloquence was left unfilled;
And in the ardour of a youthful hope
I too competed ’mid a lettered band.[24]
We numbered thirty-six. Before me I saw
Conspicuous talents, each more strong than I;
And we were set to pass a triple test,
Three different subjects taken out by lot:
Two, writ in the Professors’ presence there,
Who had to be the censors of the themes.
The first was in the language of that Rome
Who gave her laws and usage to the world;
The second, in the tongue of Italy,
Classic in style, and resonant and terse;
Lastly, the third one had to be pronounced
To the assembled public from the chair.
For the two writings, Gatti, Oliva, and I,
Issued with equal credit from the strife:
But in the third and arduous exercise
I gained the victory over all the rest.
Amid the surging and applauding throng,
The Faculty cried many times “Well done!”—
Who got the chair? A certain Bianchi did,
Who had salient merits as a loyalist.
And mice were cutting capers on the forms
Deserted by our youth indignantly.
I vamp up no fantastic notions here:
All Naples can declare it to be true.
The young men, nettled by a noble scorn,
Called me Professor—not the other man;
And I at home opened a private class,
Where I was trainer of some vivid minds:
And, if I thither could return one day,
How many a pupil should I see around!
Ah fervid youth, liege to the beautiful,
Who so did sorrow for mine adverse fate,
Durso, Malpica, Curci, Caccavon,[25]
And others to whose names my bosom beats,
In you I glory; and you, choice grateful souls,
Glory that I your master was erewhile.
The army, by the royal ordinance,
Saw heroes now supplanted by poltroons;
From the tribunals upright judges banned,
And greedy vultures were installed on them;
And, what is worse, the Kingdom’s treasury
By vultures in like manner was devoured.
Likewise a matter so terrific happed
As to fill all the Kingdom with dismay.
Wicked Canosa, back from Sicily,[26]
Invested as the Minister of Police,
Conceived a project truculent and vile,
Enough for Satan’s self to shudder at.
This monster stands by various writers drawn,
And I can be excused from limning him:
Yet, always by the King’s approval graced,
The man’s foul shame reflected on the King.
In every crime he out-did every wretch,
And now he laboured to out-do himself.
He, pondering an atrocious butchery
Which for whole weeks he set to ruminate,
Filled with the loathliest scum the capital,
Offscouring of the gibbets and the hulks;
And at a signal these men were to pounce
On any whom they saw unlike their crew.
That felon was a new Friar Alberic.[27]
Oh the hard fate and outrage of our time!
The Austrian General fathomed this intrigue,
And forced the King to turn the monster out;
Inept Italian princes were and are
The Austrian Sultan’s underling Bashaws.
Escaped from this portentous massacre,
We all denounced it with stentorian lungs.
And what a sort of crime must that have been
Which very Austria spurned!—and truth it is.
’Twas even said the King——But this I scout.
While from the foulness of despotic power
Such nauseous effluvia were diffused,
A patriotic flame wound everywhere,
And a Vesuvius all the Kingdom seemed;
And from the augmented crackling underground
At last erupted many external peals.
Like gushing blood from several arteries
Toward the treasury all the money flowed;
And with our straits our hardihood increased,
So that the government was undermined;
Already many free-souled squadrons thrilled,
Like winds unloosed to agitate the main.
The Carbonari, an unvanquished sect,[28]
A vast re-union of audacious souls,
Spread with a progress irresistible,
As in a wood by winds a tameless fire:
Opening I saw a gulf without confine,
And on the shelving marge the governors slept.
The politicians’ atrabilious brains
Called that great movement faction—shame be theirs!
For, being Carbonari almost all,
The movement may be termed the Kingdom’s own.
The King, who did us wrong with insolence,
Might have avoided it, had he been wise.
Insensate! His commands are ridiculed
Amid the increasing cries which stun the realm.
Besides, the Vardarelli slain by fraud,[29]
Slain Capobianco,[30] all men recollect.
And what the outcome of the treacheries?
“Freedom” was sounded, “Freedom” everywhere.
Not that which, ever hungering for blood,
Like to a Fury rioted in France;
But sacred Freedom, of angelic form,
Who tells the king “Be just,” and harms him not;
Who at the shrine of the metropolis
Soon saw the nation prostrated around.
O Freedom, girdled by the Italian light,
Never did man kneel unto thee so fair:
In vain Vandalic outrage hurled thee down,
For still in thousand hearts thou bear’st the sway.
I for six lustres vow to thee my life,
And, thine apostle, thee announce and preach.
Thou shalt return, return—no frenzy this!
Our century has seen no brighter year,
That year beheld not a more radiant day,
Than that when the symbolic furnaces
Diffused around the burning and the flash:
Those vivid flashes and those fiery heats
Spread light on minds and flame upon the heart.
And now a lofty hope bestows on all
Blest harmony which universal seems,
Because that flame and light can permeate
Through every member of the social frame.
And one could hear a new alliance preached
Of two great forces in a single sway:
Popular liberty and kingly power
Conjoined in amity by a lasting link;
Each one in this serves to ennoble each,—
Itself the nation honours in the king.[31]
Of such mixed government, which Europe seems
To tend to by an impulse from on high,
England possesses much that’s genuine,
But France has only seen its counterfeit.[32]
At that time, to the sound of thousand cheers,
Spain made it simpler, giving it the throne.
With friendly breeze from that re-fashioned scheme
Nations felt joy and princes troublousness;
And Naples, from of old the liege of Spain,
Revelled in rapture inexpressible:
In launching flames on this side and on that
More than volcano seemed the fiery forge.
That selfsame ardour all through Italy
Hurled curses on the shameful Austrian yoke,
When the year twenty, past its midway course,
Felt all the parching of the Syrian Dog:
That heat still swelled the Carbonaro heat,—
The Ausonian Genius blew his trumpet-call.
And to those memorable clangours soon
More than one note replied with sound of joy.
Silvati and Morelli, noble souls,[33]
Hoisted aloft the Italian battle-flag;
And Minichini,[34] of the Nolan church,
Joining them, sanctified the enterprise.
From Nola’s city on to Monteforte
The band of heroes goes determinate:
Their Country guides them, and Humanity,
And twixt these Freedom who salutes the two.
With vast applause the kingdom echoes round:
Only the palace in dismay is dumb.
Terror and rage distract it hour by hour:
Yet troops are sent—but only raise a laugh;
For squadron after squadron joins with those
So as to number a resistless host:
Despotic sway now comes to such a pass
As to appear a corpse mouldering in worms.
O Monteforte, oh the glorious slope
O’er which shone forth the star of liberty!
Like Sinai and Horeb thou’lt be famed,
For on thee the new age was brought to birth.[35]
That hour supreme is present to my soul,
Whereby I live again in youthful prime.
Naples is wavering between hope and fear,
But outside of her walls ’tis only hope.
She for the towns and cities joyously
Assembles troops and arms, and sends them on.
Guglielmo Pepe—and our fear is sped—
Mounts to be captain of the daring hosts.
Hero, all hail! History shall celebrate,
Not thy good fortune, but thy just renown.
And, more than in thy land, in hard exile
Constant wast thou, strong son of Italy.
Proud am I of thy friendship with myself,—
It is the noblest honour of my life.
And I from far cry at the mountain’s base
To that day’s dawn as prompted by a god,
“Lovely indeed art thou with stars in hair
Which like to vivid sapphires scintillate!”[36]
Dawn thou of brightest day!—and that salute
Soon through the whole of Italy re-rings.