On saddened brows a few, and many glad,
I read the souls of men enslaved or free:
And, mixed myself ’mid such conflicting minds,
Judge you if I was joyful or was grieved.
The festive thundering of the martial forts
Responded to by frequent trumpet-call,
Cheers that were uttered by a thousand mouths
As the tricoloured banner came in view,
And hurly-burly weltering all around,
Opposed enormous joy to enormous grief.
Yet thoughts, more than enough, ominous and black,
Whispered me somewhile ’mid those shouts of joy:
“My hapless country, what dost thou acclaim,
Now that one despot goes and one arrives?
Ah on thy shoulders still I find the yoke:
They doff the old one and they don the new.”
And from my heart the words leapt to my lips:
“To call this liberty were sure a jibe!
As Ferdinand in Naples stifled her,
So Bonaparte butchered her in France.
But tremble, tremble, impious man! Thy crime
On all the nations’ hearts stands written deep.”
I was a prophet here. Germany in arms,
A nation of great hearts and thought as great,
Avenging Freedom foully done to death,
Against him let whole populations loose.
Behold him fallen on field, captive at sea:
By Liberty he rose, by her he fell.
France in my youthful fervency I loved,
I loved the awful warrior guiding her:
But, when I heard, “He’s made an Emperor now,
Nor that alone, but despot autocrat,”
The hate I felt extinguished all that fire.
For many ’twas a cause of deepest grief
To contemplate with golden diadem
A brother of that despot on our throne.
His praise was—having turned the Bourbon out;
Whence, setting every other thought at rest,
They all applauded him, and so did I.
A chosen band of daring souls and brave
Encircled the incoming Frenchman round,[5]
And of two evils they acclaimed the less,
Awaiting a true good to come one day.
Round the new sceptre flocking now I marked
A crowd of shining minds, and joyed herein;
And, taking up the lyre resolvedly,
Inly I said: “A poet I was born,
And such I will be in my future course!”[6]
The use of reason scarce had I attained
When France’s thundercloud I heard that pealed—Which
next diffused around and far-afar
Terror to Kings, to nations hopefulness.
At dawning of my lifetime I resolved
To follow in that movement—and alas!
From the successive shiftings of the chance,
I, loving good, saw evil that ensued.
Across the Red Sea, sea of blood and war,
Must then the Promised Land be still approached?
That fatal whirlwind, with alternate shock,
In Naples’ kingdom all-deplorable
Full ten times made a change of government,
Alternating with serfdom liberty:
And, with the flight of that demented court,
I saw it for the fourth time altering:
And the ninth change and tenth, which now I see,
Are the most miserable of them all.
Many gave homage to the new-built throne;
And I, while scorning any cringing phrase,
Struck on my lyre, and spread abroad its sound,
Saluting that forthcoming period:
And what I said thereof in varying style,
If not free-toned, is not subservient.
Soon do the accents of my lyre recall
Men’s eyes and praises to the youthful gift,
And I diffuse the firstlings of my fame
About the kingdom’s mighty capital;
But, by attracting blear-eyed rivals too,
Envy first made me a target for her darts.
And so much did this trouble my repose,
And raised hobgoblins such a swarm at home,
That, freed from them, my dolorous exile
Has almost seemed to me beatitude.
How often have I cried—“I am exiled now,
And pardon all the rancour of my foes.”
Ah when I think it o’er I shudder still,
Though past the sixtieth limit of my years.
One Boccanera, livid in his rage,
Tempted a bravo to cut short my life;
Watchful I had to be for several months:
Can then insensate envy reach to this?
But who can tell all the contorted roads
Which rancour led my rivals to pursue?
Charges unjust, anonymous calumnies,—
But yet my innocence o’erthrew them all:
Intrepid I outfaced such keen attacks,
And became known and cherished by the young.
In public halls, where it behoved me at times
To speak the verses I had written down,
The popular applause served to prelude
My song, as soon as I appeared in sight.
That my first volume, as it issued forth,
Earned me the friendship of distinguished men,
And I was made, without soliciting,
The Poet for San Carlo’s Theatre.
I wrote some dramas there, and every one
Of my attempts was followed by success:
First Julius Sabinus’ mournful fate,
Then Hannibal’s light loves in Capua,
And finally the Birth of Hercules,[7]
Were greeted with unanimous applause.
How much I joyed that on that stately stage
My mind was thus allowed to spatiate!
“In this arena of glory,” I would say,
“If I have genius, I can show it forth”;
And dreamed of mingling in one dulcet draught
Alfieri’s style with Metastasio’s.
But my illusions waned; for various thwarts,
And fetters both direct and indirect,
And the composers and the Managers,
And Prime Donne, plots, and etiquettes,
And then protectors and aught stranger still,
Frequently shuffled all my hand of cards.
Incensed I cried: “I’ll leave the Theatre,
For here I’m nothing but a slave of slaves.”
To Monsignor Capecelatro I sped,
Our Minister at the time for Home-affairs,
And meekly spoke, expounding first the facts,
“The Madhouse is not where I want to go.”
Could vanity from sovereign patronage
Dazzle a free Parnassian intellect?
I was content with a subordinate post[8]
Then vacant in the King’s Museum; here
Propitious did the Muses nurture me
With vivid genius of the antique arts.
Here I could pasture in the selfsame hour
My craving mind, and shelter it from vice,
For an immense choice library is joined
To the Museum, in one building’s span:
And thus a double discipline exalts
My soul in beauty’s pathways and in truth’s.
’Mid living bronze and marble animate,
Which constantly held converse with my thoughts,
I something wrote in prose and much in verse,
Evolving grace upon the fair and true.
Staying amid those admirable hoards,
A treasure-house of arts and industries,
I met with Kings and met with Emperors,
Conspicuous artists, men of lettered fame.[9]
And thus three lustres of my term of life
Wore in that unperturbed abode along;
And I beheld two Kings arrive and go,
Made and unmade by force of destiny.
But, though my work was converse with the dead,
I scanned both courts, their virtues and their vice.
Of the two kings, one bad, and one was good,
And in this sentence all is summarized;
And both their fates depended, and their thrones,
Upon the man who dreamed omnipotence;
But by the Spanish and the Northern storm
The star of Bonaparte turned to pale.
Odious to many, Joseph went his way,—
That silence followed him which speaks for much;
Wasteful and lustful and vainglorious,
He by his courtiers only was deplored.
Better than Ferdinand he was for sure,
But that was merit (merit!) none could miss.
Later when Joachim of a sudden fled,
I heard a general chorus of concern—
“If but his mind were equal to his heart,
Who worthier than he to fill a throne?”
Ferdinand matched with him produces that
Which in a picture gives the shades and lights.
O epoch memorable for wretchedness!
Oh the caprice of barbarous destiny
Which sent us back that faithless Ferdinand,
Bereaving us of kindly Joachim!
And soon the craven to the valiant gave,
By the same destiny, a barbarous death.
O Bonaparte, thou the object deemed
Of worship? Ah he lies who calls thee great![10]
For thee the world claims lofty intellect,
For thee, with an enormous error fooled.
Thou wast, in wresting from the nations hope,
At once liberticide and suicide.
That day when thou didst will thee Emperor,
Thou in St Helena dugg’st out thy grave:
That day thou gav’st back Austria all her strength,
To Russia daring, potency to Kings.
That edict which the applauding Senate brought
To thee, ’twas that the edict of thy death.
Well do I know how scheming sycophants
Proclaimed the day auspicious and of joy;
But that day sowed the mournfulness of years
For thee and thine, for nations, for the world.
And thou, of piercing sight, thou saw’st it not?
By God, a mole would not have failed to see!
For thee I weep not, who in long-drawn throes
Didst reach convulsive to thy latest hour;
But for the innocent nations weep I fain,
Who, by thy hand betrayed, are moaning still.
Ever have I been prone to pardoning thee
Thy proper anguish, but not that of man.
But for that crime by which thou didst indue
Thee with vast shame and us with sorrows vast,
How long ago would Europe have beheld,
One after other, low her tyrants sunk!
When I the effect contemplate of thy crime,
I am tempted to exclaim—Be thou accurst!
Receive the judgment of the centuries—
I seem to hear it sounding o’er thy grave—
“Thou couldst have been the tyrants’ death-dealer,
And chosest for thyself a despot’s name.
As the keen-cutting vengeful sword of God,
Let wrong thou didst to others fall on thee!”
Now the Queen-city, Joachim being gone,
Remained uncertain of her future fate;
And, like death’s messenger, the cry arose—
“Ferdinand hastens back, and Caroline”:
And on a thousand gloomy brows one read
More horror than for earthquake or the plague.
And of those two the most terrific things
I heard a hundred hundred tongues narrate.
Some travelled, some escaped, some hid themselves,
And one was known to have gone mad with fear:
But hope, I saw, had halfway been revived
When it was published—“Caroline is dead.”
Yes, more than halfway; for they all averred:
“This Bourbon, in himself, is weak and null;
And, if he did become so black a wretch,
’Twas that she-Fury who impelled him on:
Now that she’s foundered in the realms of night,
A human being he may be once more.”
And so it proved. The first-imagined fears
Were cleared away from the most troubled minds,
And all perceived that on a better plan
That richly-gifted Kingdom would be ruled,
And would attain, under a milder curb,
If not prosperity, at least repose.
The Aonian chorus revelled in the peace,
And chaunted amid others’ songs my own.
Our Ferdinand the Fourth was just a fiend,
But, dubbed the First, he wears an angel’s grace.
And I beheld that festive ardour grow,
The less expected, all the livelier.
’Tis true so much rejoicing was perturbed,
In almost every confine of the realm,
By feverish epidemic, Noja’s plague,
And, worst of all, a longsome year of dearth:
But still the King dictated remedies,
And, if he could no more, he sympathized.