Then in the night I went with saddened soul
To contemplate the shore which met my view.
All are reposing in the silent hour,
Except some watch that paces vigilant;
And I alone and pensive on the prow
Stand communing with this my land betrayed;
And a few happy days and many dire
Are passing in review before mine eyes.
Ever ferocious Tyranny I saw
Becoming stronger by flagitious means;
And Freedom, tasted for a few poor days,
Begetting, like the fruit of Eden, death;
And Treason, like a snake pestiferous,
From two great goblets sipping tears and blood.
And, while my fantasy on every side
Ran riot, struck by miserable ideas,
The scenes of sanguinary Ninety-nine
Offered themselves to my dejected soul;
And o’er the regal lair meseemed I saw
A host funereal of threat’ning ghosts.
“Unhappy country, adieu!”—And that adieu
Over all Italy I diffused in song.[43]
LIFE IN EXILE—MALTA AND ENGLAND
To thee the first the British prow was turned,
Flourishing Malta, small but beautiful,
A quiet refuge ’mid the unquiet sea,
Of an Italian mind and Arab speech.
I, sifting out of fallacies the truth,
Full half a lustre passed within thy bounds;
And, but for patriotic sorrowings,
Out there I should have led a placid life,—
For I encountered courteous, cultured minds,—
Culture in some, in many courtesy.
But both of these—they have my homage here—
I amply in one person found conjoined,
John Hookham Frere, a learned man and wise,
A Privy Councillor of the British Crown.
Himself he shone, not through extraneous aids,
And how I knew him I shall gladly tell.
Fame, so propitious to poetic gifts,
In Malta made a magnified report—
That Italy’s Tyrtæus had arrived,
And rescued by the British Admiral.
And I by many people was informed
That in the higher class the wish prevailed
That in some noted house I should display
My fervour of poetic improvise;
And I, now so suspicious of my powers,
Unhesitating answered—“Yes, at once.”
Ah me unhappy! I’m no more the man!
But such must be the course of human fate.
Too true, I, then a river, am now a rill—
A rill which comes anear to drying up.
In vain I stir my fancy, which is tired,—
I cannot even command poetic phrase.
These verses—let me say this prose in rhyme—
As I dictate them, others write them down,[44]
And, as they all gush out extempore,
Some of them will be good, and others bad:
Nor do I blot the bad to keep the best,
But pass them current as they chance to come.
To get the whole expressed without constraint,
And without labouring after phrase and word,
I pitched on purpose on that sextal rhyme
In which one easily words the thing one wants.
On my assent, a spacious hall prepares
For ladies, men of letters, diplomats.
There that distinguished man enraptured heard
My burst of song ’mid plaudits many and full;[45]
And, being unused to such demonstrances,
He deemed the thing almost a prodigy.
I sang six themes, and my excited mind
Poured copiously divergent styles and rhythms.
Persons of eminence, the following day,
Graced me by visits of civility.
But one beneficent and reverend mien
In which I read exalted characters,
A diction which, arising from the soul,
Goes to the heart, and fixes what it says—
This ’mid the throng I noted. He being gone,
I asked his name—and it astonished me;
For all that I had heard rumoured around
About his talents settled on my thought:
An ample treasure-house of classic lore,[46]
Such did Fame publish him by hundred mouths:
Toward him desire resistless drew me on,
Nor did his presence lessen his repute.
Unconscious of his fame he singly seemed,—
To hear it named was what he could not brook;
Courtesy generous and without display,
Learning immense, and greater modesty;—
Ah who could paint that noble-natured man?
One day when he accorded praise anew
To chaunts of mine which wakened his surprise,
I answered him: “In you I seem to see
The imperial eagle by a sparrow charmed.
I know my verse has earned me banishment;
But I, excelling some, bend low to you.”
And later, when I saw how plenteously
He dealt his succours to the sick and poor,
I in John Hookham Frere discerned the type
Of the sublime Christian philosopher.
None but an angel could pourtray him true,—
I feel my eyes grow moist to speak of him.
He called me friend, and that has been my pride,
And in myself I reverenced the name.
Having that store of virtues in my gaze,
Sanctified in him by Christianity,—
’Tis sacred duty to confess as much—
I felt myself grow better by so great
A pattern. Nevermore he left my thoughts,
And even in death within my heart he lives.
To him, after I reached the English shores
(All distant from him though I then had passed),
I dedicated Dante’s Comedy,
With Analytic Comment from my pen.
That Psaltery to him too I inscribed
Which praises freedom and ennobles man,
And he with kindliness received the wish
I showed that it be dedicate to him.
Of him with lively gratitude anew
I chaunted in my “Seer in Solitude.”
Those lines while I was writing, thou, blest soul,
Wast winging forth thy way to Paradise,
There to embrace the sister and the spouse
From whom thou languishing wast parted here.
O all of you elected spirits and pure,
Look down on desolate Rossetti’s grief.
He in himself holds that same constancy
Which every one of you applauded oft.
Still exiled, but now old, infirm, and blind,
How different alas from other-while!
Different? Ah no! Although oppressed by years,
He for his country always is the same.
And he, on hearing how that freedom’s tree
Has there re-budded, full of sapfulness,[47]
Blesses his every sweat of brow poured out
To irrigate its high ancestral germ;
And, now when all men sweat to nurture it
He hopes before he dies to taste its fruits.
Now Scythian cold, ’tis true, reigns everywhere,
But none can think it will last on for aye:
To the political winter now endured
A more propitious season must succeed;
And all by various signs can estimate
That flowers and fruits we yet shall see in bloom.