Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn ? Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. JOHN KEATS Mother and Poet. (Turin, after news from Gaeta, 1861.) EAD! One of them shot by the sea in the east, DEAD And one of them shot in the west by the sea! Yet I was a poetess only last year, And good at my art, for a woman, men said; But this woman, this, who is agonized here, --The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head Forever instead. MOTHER AND POET. What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain! 69 What art is she good at, but hurting her breast With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain? Ah boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you pressed And I proud, by that test. What art's for a woman? to hold on her knees Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat And 'broider the long-clothes and neat little coat! To teach them. . It stings there! I made them, indeed, The tyrant cast out. And when their eyes flashed. . O my beautiful eyes! . . God! how the house feels! At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled With my kisses,-of camp-life and glory, and how They both loved me, and soon, coming home to be spoiled In return would fan off every fly from my brow With their green laurel-bough. Then was triumph at Turin: "Ancona was free !" While they cheered in the street. I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong, My Nanni would add, "he was safe, and aware To live on for the rest." On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta :-Shot. Tell his mother. Ah, ah, "his," "their" mother, -not "mine," No voice says "my mother" again to me. What! Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with heaven, O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark To the face of Thy mother! consider, I pray, How we common mothers stand desolate, mark, Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away And no last word to say! MOTHER AND POET. Both boys dead? but that's out of nature. 71 We all Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one. 'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall; And, when Italy's made, for what end is it done, Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then? When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men ? When the guns of Cavalli with final retort Have cut the game short; When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee, When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red, When you have your country from mountain to sea, When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head, (And I have my dead),— What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low, And burn your lights faintly! Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow: Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength, And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn; But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length Into wail such as this-and we sit on forlorn Dead! When the man-child is born. One of them shot by the sea in the east, ELIZABETH B. BROWNING. Nuremberg. N the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow lands IN Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables like the rooks that round them throng: Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors rough and bold Had their dwellings in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted in their uncouth rhyme, That their great, imperial city stretched its hand to every clime. In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band, Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand; On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own. In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust, And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust: |