REESE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 7*3 
 
 Class X ^ 
 
 T-v-^c-ur^rsrv, 
 
POEMS OF ITALY 
 
This edition is limited to two hundred 
 
 and fifty copies, numbered and 
 
 signed by the author. 
 
 Number. ^^7 
 
U'fiiv 
 
POEMS OF ITALY 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 FROM THE ODES OF 
 GIOSUE CARDUCCI 
 
 TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, 
 BY 
 
 M. W. ARMS 
 
 IIS^ 
 
 ^aST 
 
 J^IIL 
 
 G*55X 
 
 f^fcS^Srsl? 
 
 THE GRAFTON PRESS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
Copyright, 1906, by 
 The Grafton Press 
 
 RE5Sg 
 
K. W. A. 
 
 161925 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Giosue Carducci, .... 9 
 
 Before the Old Castle of Verona, . 23 
 
 On the Death of the Prince Imperial, 25 
 
 In the Piazza of San Petronio, . 28 
 
 Miramar, 30 
 
 To Giuseppe Garibaldi, ... 34 
 
 Rome, 37 
 
 Notes, 39 
 
Giosue Carducci 
 
 THE life of Giosue Carducci, the foremost 
 of living Italian poets, spans an epic 
 period. He was born in 1835, when 
 Italy was indeed little more than a "geographi- 
 cal expression," an aggregation of states sepa- 
 rated from each other by wide differences in 
 customs and even language, united only by 
 common suffering under foreign tyranny. He 
 is alive to-day, when the seemingly impossible 
 fusion of these states has become an accom- 
 plished fact, and the kingdom of Italy is free not 
 only as Napoleon III promised it should be, 
 "from the Alps to the Adriatic," but from the 
 Alps to the extremest tip of Sicily, and from the 
 Adriatic to the Mediterranean. 
 I It would hardly be possible for any man of 
 I strong feeling and quick imagination to have 
 1 lived through such a struggle as that for Italian 
 .1 unity without having his character deeply influ- 
 enced thereby. Carducci, moreover, was brought 
 up in an environment and amid circumstances 
 that still further tended to breed in him a pecu- 
 liarly passionate love of country and hatred of 
 foreign domination. His father was a physician 
 9 
 
in the Government service, but a devotee of Man- 
 zoni and an ardent Liberal. He had suffered 
 imprisonment as a "Carbonaro" after the in- 
 surrectionary movement of 1831, and he only 
 awaited an opportunity again to identify himself 
 with the revolutionists. This opportunity offered 
 itself in 1848, and his active participation in the 
 events of that and the following year led to the 
 loss of his position. The family moved to Flor- 
 ence in consequence, and there Giosue was sent 
 to the Scolopi Fathers to school. 
 
 The war of 1848-49 left an indelible impres- 
 sion on the boy's mind. Austria had been braved 
 by the little kingdom of Sardinia, and though 
 disaster and defeat had followed the gallant 
 demonstration against the foreigner, yet through 
 all Italy a long awakening breath had been 
 drawn. In the eager young student of these 
 days, whose first fourteen years had been passed 
 in the midst of the melancholy and suggestive 
 charm of the Tuscan "Maremma" (fens), who 
 had learned Latin at his father's knee, and at 
 his mother's the tragedies of Alfieri and the revo- 
 lutionary poetry of Berchet, we may find a 
 prophecy of the man. Impetuous, bitterly im- 
 patient of shams of any kind, with a devouring 
 10 
 
passion for books, an_arcknt worship of the great 
 K \ t classic wr iters and of those modern Italian 
 I [ authors who dreamed a new life for Italy such 
 Carducci showed himself, during these four 
 years in Florence, to his companion Chiarini, 
 who in his turn has drawn the portrait for us.* 
 An incident that occurred a little later, while 
 Giosue was studying at the Normal School of 
 Pisa, throws further light on his character. 
 
 In the summer of 1855, a severe epidemic of 
 cholera broke out at Pian Castagnaio, the little 
 village where the Carducci family was then set- 
 tled. Giosue, home for his holidays, instantly 
 laid aside his books and his writing, and, aided 
 by his brother and two acquaintances, thr^w 
 himself with enthusiastic devotion into the busi- 
 ness of caring for the sick. So much practical 
 ability did he display that the Municipality put 
 him at the head of a commission for sanitary 
 measures and public assistance, and until the 
 epidemic was at an end, late in September, he 
 gave his time and energy to the work entrusted 
 to his hands. "I have put aside, as is the duty 
 of a good citizen, the meditative life for the ac- 
 ^ *See "Impressioni e Ricordi di Giosue Carducci," 
 by G. Chiarini. 
 
 II 
 
tive," he wrote to a friend during this period, 
 "which latter, as our great Leopardi teaches us, 
 is more natural to man and more worthy of him 
 than the other." 
 
 The next year saw Carducci's entrance into 
 the literary lists an entrance which was, how- 
 ever, anonymously made. A short while before, 
 one Gargani, a school comrade of Giosue's in 
 Florence, had published a booklet entitled " Re- 
 marks on the Ultra Modern Poets" ("Diceria 
 su i poeti odiernissimi"), which attacked with- 
 out mercy the servility and degradation to which 
 poetry had been reduced by the verse-makers of 
 the day. The "Remarks" created a consider- 
 able stir among Florentine critics, and were 
 assailed with every sarcasm and opprobrious 
 epithet that the editorial pen could furnish. 
 Gargani, however, was one of a group of friends 
 all the members of which had participated in 
 the compilation of the volume and were eager 
 to defend it from attack; and there presently 
 appeared a second pamphlet under the title: 
 "Interest on the Principle; the Pedantic Friends 
 to the Ultra Modern Poets and their Defend- 
 ers" ("Giunta alia derrata; ai poeti odiernissimi 
 e lor difensori gli amici pedanti.") The four 
 
 12 
 
sonnets contained therein were all from the 
 hand of Carducci, and the same touch is dis- 
 cernible in much of the main discourse. 
 
 That same autumn (1856), we find the poet 
 installed as Instructor of Rhetoric in the Gin- 
 nasio of San Miniato al Tedesco. While there 
 he published (1857) his first volume of poetry 
 by the persuasion of one of his friends and fellow 
 teachers and for the sole purpose, as he himself 
 tells us,* of paying his and the said friend's 
 debts for lodging and at the cafe. Soon after, he 
 left San Miniato, "and the "Verses' remained 
 exposed to the pity of Franceseco Silvio Orlan- 
 dini, to the scorn of Paolo Emilano Giudici, to 
 the insults of Pietro Fanfani." f 
 
 Graver responsibilities now devolved upon 
 Carducci. In 1858 his father died, and he was 
 left alone to support his mother, a sister, and a 
 younger brother. Undismayed, he entered the 
 battle. Florence was the home of his choice; 
 there, when he married in 1859, ne brought wife 
 and family; there he studied, gave lessons, 
 
 *In that charming bit of prose, "Le 'Risorse' di 
 San Miniato al Tedesco." 
 f Writers of the day. 
 
 13 
 
edited various books for the publisher, Barbera, 
 and eagerly kept "his ears and his heart open 
 to all the voices that seemed to give hope of the 
 speedy liberation of Italy."* 
 
 These voices during 1859 and i860 grew ever 
 louder till they swelled into a mighty chant of 
 triumph. The King of Sardinia and Piedmont, 
 Vittorio Emanuele, declared war against Aus- 
 tria with France as his ally. Tuscany threw off 
 the yoke of her Grand Duke and established a 
 provisional government of her own; Parma and 
 Modena followed suit, so did the Papal State of 
 Romagna; finally the plebiscite of March II, 
 i860, united all these provinces of Central Italy 
 with Piedmont. In the same year came Gari- 
 baldi's triumphant expedition into Sicily and 
 Naples; Southern Italy was added to Northern 
 and Central; the Papal States, except Rome, 
 were conquered; and on February 18, 1861, the 
 first parliament of United Italy met at Turin. 
 All these events live in the poetry of Carducci. 
 "To the Cross of Savoy" ("Alia Croce di 
 Savoia"), "Plebiscitum" ("Plebiscite"), "The 
 Rock of Quarto" ("Scoglio di Quarto"), are 
 examples of a collection that forms a lyric epit- 
 *Chiarini. 
 14 
 
ome of the Italian struggle, from the first faint 
 dawn to the golden morning. 
 
 But the making of Italy was not to be com- 
 pleted, perhaps naturally, as gloriously as it had 
 been commenced. Carducci, who, when Vit- 
 torio Emanuele first flung down the gauntlet of 
 defiance before Austria v had hailed the Piedmont- 
 ese king as the hero-liberator of his country, 
 watched with small patience the dairyings and 
 pettiness displayed by the monarchical party 
 after its accession to power. The transference 
 of the capital from Turin to Florence, with the 
 implied abandonment of Rome, was the first 
 blow to his loyalty. The acceptance of Venice 
 from the hands of France, the treatment in- 
 flicted on Garibaldi, the long delay that inter- 
 vened before the Government could be driven, 
 with manifest unwillingness, finally to occupy 
 Rome all these political intrigues and calcu- 
 lations were abhorrent to the poet. He had 
 been given the Chair of Italian Literature at the 
 University of Bologna in i860, and had moved 
 to that city in consequence. Gradually he be- 
 came affiliated with the Republican party there, 
 and the poem "After Aspromonte ,, ("Dopo 
 Aspromonte ,, ) > written in 1863, put the seal upon 
 IS 
 
his change of political creed. In 1868, he was 
 suspended from his professorship on account of 
 the part he had taken in an address sent to 
 Mazzini, but so great was his popularity in Bo- 
 logna that the suspension was of short duration. 
 In 1871, appeared a volume entitled "Poems of 
 Giosue Carducci" ("Poesie di Giosue Carduc- 
 ci"), but his name only came into wide promi- 
 nence with the publication in 1873 of the "New 
 Poems" ("Nuove Poesie"). The "Barbaric 
 gj Odes" ("Odi Barbare"), the first of which 
 appeared in 1877, completed the establishment 
 of his fame in Italy a fame which ever since 
 has been steadily increasing and spreading be- 
 yond the confines of his own land. In 1887, the 
 poet was offered the newly instituted Dante 
 Chair at the University of Rome, but declined 
 the honor in order to remain in Bologna to 
 which city he had become by this time intimately 
 attached, and in which he still makes his real 
 home. 
 
 In glancing over the record of Carducci's life, 
 as reflected both in his acts and in his work, one 
 is impressed chiefly, I think, by the unity of 
 principle which underlies its many phases. His 
 poetry and prose voice, through all variety of 
 16 
 
 I 
 
form and subject, one creed; his actions, often 
 contradictory in appearance, spring from one 
 source. He is always the poet the challenger 
 of the world's smallnesses, compromises, hypoc- 
 risies; the seeker after the beautiful, the high, 
 the true, whether found in king's palace or 
 peasant's hut, in Christian church or pagan 
 temple. Because the Papacy appears to him a 
 thing of corruption and tyranny, he turns from 
 the dark cathedral to the boundless purity of 
 the open air and the arms of the great earth- 
 mother. Because, in the early days, Vittorio 
 Emanuele presents himself as the symbol of 
 Italy's salvation, he sings the Cross of Savoy; 
 the monarchy, triumphant, grows careless of its 
 ideals, and Carducci passes to the Republicans 
 with "After Aspromonte;" the great person- 
 alities that had been the glory of the Republican 
 party disappear, the standard is lowered, and he 
 draws near once more to the throne that has 
 been sanctioned by the people's voice. It is 
 with spiritual values, not with external forms, 
 that he concerns himself; and in one of the 
 prose essays, "Raccoglimenti," he gives us the 
 key to his attitude. 
 
 "The poet should not feel himself obliged to 
 17 
 
obey certain exigencies, as one may call them, 
 of his time. Because, if the harp of his soul 
 instead of vibrating beneath the wing of the 
 fleeting Psyche, instead of answering to each 
 echo of the past, to each breath of the future, to 
 the solemn murmur of the centuries and of pre- 
 ceding generations, allows itself to be caressed 
 by zephyrs from a lady's fan or soldier's plume, 
 shrinks at the rustle of the professorial toga or 
 the babblings of the gazette then woe, woe to 
 the poet, if poet indeed he be ! To plant one's self 
 at the window with every variation in tempera- 
 ture in order to ascertain what garb is assumed 
 by the taste of the legal majority is to distract, 
 to chill, to fossilize the soul. The poet should 
 express himself and his moral and artistic con- 
 victions with all the sincerity, the clearness, the 
 resolution in his power; the rest is no concern 
 of his." 
 
 !& fg *t *l *fc 
 
 it 
 
T 
 
 HE following half dozen poems have 
 been selected from the "Odi Barbare,"* 
 
 on the two volumes of which Carducci's 
 fame most clearly rests. The first edition of 
 these Odes appeared in 1877, and owing to cer- 
 | tain metrical innovations gave rise to a storm of 
 ! discussion among the critics. Stronger, how- 
 ever, than the Italian reverence for established 
 I form is the Italian responsiveness to beauty. It 
 was recognized that the Odes presented a thor- 
 >yj/ oughly harmonious whole, however unlawfully 
 attained, and the contest ended in the establish- 
 ment of Carducci as the foremost among living 
 Italian poets and of the Odes as a triumphant 
 assertion, not only of his maturest poetic thought, 
 but of his mastery of a scheme of versification 
 which, on first consideration, might appear some- 
 what alien to the genius of the language. 
 
 Of the wonderful variety and beauty of this 
 versification, I realize that my translations give 
 
 *A considerable number of the poems of Carducci 
 have already been translated and published in book 
 form by the Rev. Frank Sewall. In his collection, 
 however, comparatively few of the "Odi Barbare" 
 find place, and none of those which I have here 
 chosen. 
 
 19 
 
no conception. Because the originals are un- 
 r hymed, and because of a certain gravity and 
 stateliness in their metre, I have uniformly made 
 our English blank verse the instrument of my 
 renderings. To do so, I am well aware, is to 
 incur the risk of monotony; but the attempt to 
 reproduce with unskilled touch the complex 
 music of the master would, I believe, be even 
 more misleading in its result. In the single case 
 of "Miramar," I have held to the original form 
 to the extent of preserving the short line at the 
 close of every stanza. 
 
 It may be that the accusation of sameness 
 will be brought against the substance as well as 
 the structure of the following poems. Car- 
 ducci's genius has an extraordinarily wide range; 
 it is satirical, patriotic, classical, but its most 
 ; characteristic and subtile quality is its impres- 
 sionism its power of creating atmosphere 
 \through the medium of words. This quality is 
 apparent to a greater or less degree in all our 
 poet's work, but chiefly so in such descriptive 
 poems as those which are here selected. "Mi- 
 ramar," "Rome," "Before the Old Castle of 
 Verona," are not specific word-pictures, but 
 rather poetic evocations of the significance latent 
 
 20 
 
in castle, campagna, and river. And because it 
 seems to me that this interpretative faculty, this 
 ( P,y er to PI e ?ent "the living soul" of things is a 
 peculiarly precious literary attribute, N I have 
 taken for translation poems that offered strik- 
 ing examples of its presence without regard to 
 the fact that, in substance, they nearly all be- 
 longed to one type. In translation, of course, 
 much of the original charm must be lost. One 
 may preserve the thought, but to make another 
 language recreate the same atmosphere, borders 
 upon the impossible. In the present instance I 
 have aimed simply at being as literal as was 
 consistent with the chosen form of verse, trust- 
 ing that in such wise some virtue of the original 
 might still cling to its English rendering. 
 
 M. W. Arms. 
 Washington, D. C, December, 1905. 
 
 21 
 
Before the Old Castle of Verona 
 
 Green Adige, 'twas thus in rapid course 
 And powerful, that thou didst murmur 'neath 
 The Roman bridges sparkling from thy stream 
 Thine ever-running song unto the sun, 
 When Odoacer, giving way before 
 The onrush of Theodoric, fell back, 
 And midst the bloody wrack about them passed 
 Into this fair Verona blond and straight 
 Barbarian women in their chariots, singing 
 Songs unto Odin; while the Italian folk 
 Gathered about their Bishop and put forth 
 To meet the Goths the supplicating Cross. 
 
 Thus from the mountains rigid with their snows, 
 In all the placid winter's silver gladness 
 To-day thou still, O tireless fugitive, 
 Dost murmuring pass upon thy way, beneath 
 The Scaligers' old battlemented bridge, 
 Betwixt time-blackened piles and squalid trees, 
 To far-off hills serene, and to the towers 
 Whence weep the mourning banners for the day, 
 Returning now, which saw the death of him 
 Whom a free Italy first chose her king. 
 Still, Adige, thou singest as of yore 
 Thine ever-running song unto the sun. 
 23 
 
I, too, fair river, sing, and this my song 
 Would put the centuries into little verse; 
 And palpitating to each thought, my heart 
 Follows the stanza's upward-quivering flight. 
 But with the years, my verse will dull and fade; 
 Thou, Adige, the eternal poet art, 
 Who still when of these hills the turret crown 
 Is shattered into fragments, and the snake 
 Sits hissing in the sunlight where now stands 
 The great basilica, St. Zeno's fane 
 Still in the desert solitudes wilt voice 
 The sleepless tedium of the infinite. 
 
 24 
 
On the Death of the Prince 
 Imperial 
 
 ONE, the barbarian javelin laid low, 
 Unwitting; in the eyes that glowed with 
 life 
 Extinguishing the smiles they seemed to catch 
 From phantoms floating in the azure vast. 
 
 The other, vainly drugged with kisses 'neath 
 His Austrian plumes, and in the frozen dawns 
 Dreaming reveilles and the warlike roll 
 Of drums, bent, like a pallid hyacinth. 
 
 Far from their mothers, both; the silken curls 
 With childhood's brightness on them, seem to 
 
 wait 
 The furrow that is left by the caress 
 Of the maternal hand. But now instead 
 
 They are cast into darkness, these young souls, 
 With none to comfort; neither follows them 
 Their country's tribute, sounding at the grave 
 The notes of love and the high strain of glory. 
 
 *5 
 
Not this, O dark son of Hortensia,* 
 Not this your promise to your little heir. 
 For him you prayed before the face of Paris 
 A fate far different from the King of Rome's. 
 
 Sebastopol's great victory and peace 
 Lulled with the rustling of their shining wings 
 The little one; admiring Europe watched, 
 And shown the imperial Column beacon-bright. 
 
 But all December's mire is stained with blood, 
 And treach'ry lurks behind the Brumaire fogs; 
 No bushes can take root in such a soil, 
 Or else bear ashes and a poisoned fruit. 
 
 O lonely house on the Aiaccian shore, 
 Shaded forever by your great green oaks, 
 With hills serene about you like a crown 
 And at your feet the solemn-sounding sea! 
 
 'Twas here Letitia fair Italian name 
 Which henceforth in all ages sounds mischance- 
 Was happy wife and mother for, alas! 
 Too short a time; and here, O Consult here, 
 
 *Napoleon III. 
 
 fNapoleon the Great. 
 
 26 
 
Launched your last thunderbolt against the 
 thrones, 
 
 Given to the people your concordant laws 
 
 You should have come to live withdrawn, be- 
 twixt 
 
 The ocean and the God of your belief. 
 
 Domestic shade, to-day Letitia haunts 
 
 The empty house; not round her head there 
 
 played 
 The rays of Caesar betwixt church and tomb, 
 Corsican mother, all her life was spent. 
 
 Her Son of Destiny with eagle eyes, 
 Her daughters, fair as the resplendent dawn, 
 And nephews all aglow with eager hopes, 
 All were laid low, all far away from her. 
 
 Corsica's Niobe, at night she stands 
 There by the door whence from baptismal rites 
 Her children issued forth, and her proud arms 
 She stretches out over the savage sea, 
 
 And calls, and calls if from the Western shore, 
 If from Britannia, or the Land of Night * 
 No one of all her tragic-fated offspring, 
 Wafted by death, is borne unto her bosom. 
 
 * Africa, where the Prince Imperial was killed. 
 
 27 
 
In the Piazza of San Petronio 
 
 D 
 
 ARK in the winter's crystal air arise 
 Bologna's turrets, and above them laughs 
 The mountain-slope all whitened by the 
 snows. 
 
 It is that mellowest hour when the sun 
 
 His dying salutation on the towers 
 
 And, Saint Petronius, on thy temple sheds, 
 
 Towers whose battlements the broad-spread 
 
 wings 
 Of many passing centuries have grazed, 
 And the grave temple's solitary peak. 
 
 The adamantine sky is gleaming cold 
 In its refulgence, and the air is drawn 
 O'er the piazza like a silver veil 
 
 That lightly brushes with caressing touch 
 
 The threatening piles, whose grim walls gather 
 
 round, 
 Raised by our fathers' mail-encircled arms. 
 28 
 
Still lingering on the mountain heights, the sun 
 Looks o'er the scene; and languidly his smile 
 Falls with suffusing tint of violet 
 
 On the grey building stones and on the dark 
 Vermilion brick, and seems to waken there 
 The living soul of vanished centuries; 
 
 And wakens in the rigid winter air 
 
 A melancholy yearning for the glow 
 
 Of spring-times past, of warm and festal eves, 
 
 When here in the piazza used to dance 
 
 The beauteous women, and in triumph home 
 
 Returned the Consuls with their captive kings. 
 
 Thus in her flight the Muse is laughing back 
 Upon tljpverse in which vaJn longing throbs 
 For all the antique beauty that is gone. 
 
 29 
 
Miramar 
 
 OMIRAMAR, about your fair white 
 towers, 
 Weary with weight of the rain-burdened 
 sky, 
 Like some dark cluster of ill-omened birds 
 Gather the clouds. 
 
 O Miramar, against your granite rocks, 
 Grey-rising from the grim deeps of the sea 
 With echoing shriek as of tormented souls 
 Thunder the waves. 
 
 In melancholy shadow of the clouds 
 Stand, keeping watch above the double gulf, 
 Turreted cities of the Istrian shore 
 
 Gems of the sea. 
 
 And all its roaring anger still the sea 
 
 Hurls 'gainst the rocky rampart whence you look 
 
 Over the Adriatic on both sides, 
 
 Hapsburgian hold. 
 
 O'er Nabresina thunder bursts and rolls 
 Along the iron coast; and, lightning-crowned, 
 Distant Trieste through a mist of showers 
 Raises her head. 
 30 
 
Ah, how all nature smiled on that fair morn 
 Of April when, his lovely dame beside, 
 Forth came the fair-haired Emperor, to sail 
 For distant shores. 
 
 Upon his placid countenance there beamed 
 The manly strength of one to empire called; 
 The blue eyes of his lady wandered proud 
 Over the sea. 
 
 Farewell, O castle of the happy days, 
 Vainly constructed as a nest for love! 
 An alien zephyr toward the desert ocean 
 Bears off the twain. 
 
 With kindled hopes, they leave the halls adorned 
 With chiselled wisdom and triumphal story; 
 Dante and Goethe to the castle's lord 
 Make vain appeal. 
 
 A sphinx of changeful aspect lures him on 
 To follow in her path across the sea. 
 He yields, and half-way open leaves the book 
 Of old romance. 
 3i 
 
Ah, 'twas no song of love or high exploit, 
 No music of guitars that waited him 
 To sound a welcome in the Aztec Spain! 
 Long on the air, 
 
 What is that wail which from Salvor's sad Point 
 Sounds midst the raucous sobbing of the flood ? 
 Do dead Venetians sing, or else the old, 
 Old Istrian Fates ? 
 
 "Ah, Son of Hapsburg, in an ill-starred hour 
 You mount, upon our seas, the fated ship! * 
 Darkly the Furies, by you, to the wind 
 Shake out the sails. 
 
 See how the sphinx perfidiously gives back 
 As you advance, and puts on other forms! 
 It is mad Joan's livid look that fronts 
 That of your wife; 
 
 It is the severed head of France's Queen f 
 Grinning at you; and with deep-sunken eyes 
 Fastened on yours, 'tis Montezuma's fierce 
 Yellow-hued face. 
 *The"Novara." 
 f Marie Antoinette. 
 
 32 
 
While, midst dark tufts of savage plants, un- 
 stirred 
 By any breathing of benignant airs, 
 Huitzilopotli in his pyramid 
 
 Sits keeping watch. 
 
 Out from the god are darting livid flames 
 Into the tropic night; he scents your blood, 
 And with his gaze o'ersweeps the spreading 
 main, 
 
 Howling, "Oh come! 
 
 "Long have I waited; the ferocious whites 
 Destroyed my kingdom, broke my temples down, 
 Gome, self-devoted victim, nephew thou 
 Of the Fifth Charles. 
 
 "I wanted not your forebears of ill fame, 
 Rotten with vice, consumed with royal madness; 
 For you I waited, you I pluck, reborn 
 
 Hapsburgian flower. 
 
 "And to Guatimozino's mighty soul 
 That reigns 'neath the pavilion of the sun, 
 I send you, Maximilian, that are strong, 
 Beautiful, pure!" 
 33 
 
To Giuseppe Garibaldi 
 
 November 3, mdccclxxx. 
 
 ALONE rides the Dictator at the head 
 Of the advancing mournful band, with- 
 drawn 
 Into his thoughts and silent; round him earth 
 And sky alike are leaden, squalid, chill. 
 
 The heavy plashing of his horse's hoofs 
 In the deep mire was audible; behind, 
 The cadenced fall of footsteps and the sighs 
 Breathed from heroic breasts into the night. 
 
 But from each clod livid with slaughter's stain, 
 From every blood-dewed bush, wherever lay 
 The poorest fragment or the smallest, torn, 
 O you Italian mothers, from your hearts 
 
 There, like a star a flame sprang up, and rose 
 A sound of many voices chanting hymns; 
 Far in the background shone Olympic Rome, 
 And through the air a mighty paean ran. 
 
 34 
 
Mentana saw proclaimed the ages' shame, 
 Caesar's and Peter's infamous embrace; 
 Thou hast, O Garibaldi, at Mentana 
 On Peter and on Caesar set thy foot. 
 
 O thou, of Aspromonte splendid rebel, 
 
 O glorious victor of Mentana thou, 
 
 Come then, and tell Palermo's tale and Rome's 
 
 Unto Camillus in the Capitol!" 
 
 Thus a mysterious voice of spirits ran 
 Solemnly through the Italian sky that day 
 When all the vile lamented in their fright 
 Curs that shrank cowering from the avenging 
 lash. 
 
 Now, Italy adores thee. A new Rome 
 
 Is hailing thee her latest Romulus. 
 
 Thou dost ascend, divine one; round thy head 
 
 There cannot come the silences of death. 
 
 Over the common gulf of little souls 
 Refulgent art thou, by the ages called 
 Up to the lofty heights and councils pure 
 Of gods and heroes watching o'er our land. 
 
 35 
 
Thou dost ascend. And Dante, looking, says 
 
 To Virgil: "Ne'er a nobler hero form 
 
 Did we conceive ..." Then Livy, with a 
 
 smile, 
 " To my domain, O poets, he belongs. 
 
 "Yea, written in Italian civil story 
 The record of tenacious daring stands 
 Daring that had its root in justice, reached 
 To loftiest heights, and in the ideal sought light." 
 
 Glory to thee, O father! In the grim 
 Shud'rings of Etna breathes thy lion heart 
 And in the whirlwinds of the Alps, let loose 
 Against barbarian foe and tyrant's rule. 
 
 Serenely shines from thy calm heart diffused, 
 Light in the sea's blue laughter and the sky's, 
 In all the flowering Mays, and o'er the tombs 
 Of heroes, and their fair memorial marbles. 
 
 36 
 
Rome 
 
 ROME, on thine air I cast my soul adrift, 
 To soar sublime; do thou, O Rome, 
 receive 
 This soul of mine and flood it with thy light. 
 
 Not curiously concerned with little things 
 To thee I come; who is there that would seek 
 For butterflies beneath the Arch of Titus ? 
 
 Do thou but shed thine azure round me, Rome, 
 Illumine me with sunlight; all-divine 
 Are the sun's rays in thy vast azure spaces. 
 
 They bless alike the dusky Vatican,, 
 
 The beauteous Quirinal, and ancient there 
 
 The Capitol, amongst all ruins holy. 
 
 And from thy seven hills thou stretchest forth 
 Thine arms, O Rome, to meet the love diffused, 
 A radiant splendor, through the quiet air. 
 
 The solitudes of the Campagna form 
 That nuptial-couch; and thou, O hoar Soratte, 
 Thou art the witness in eternity. 
 37 
 
O Alban Moutains, sing ye smilingly 
 The epithalamium ; green Tusculum 
 Sing thou; and sing, O fertile Tivoli! 
 
 Whilst I from the Janiculum look down 
 With wonder on the city's pictured form 
 A mighty ship, launched toward the world's do- 
 minion. 
 
 O ship, whose poop rising on high attains 
 The infinite, bear with thee on thy passage 
 My soul unto the shores of mystery! 
 
 Let me, when fall those twilights radiant 
 With the white jewels of the coming night, 
 Quietly linger on the Flaminian Way; 
 
 Then may the hour supreme, in fleeing, brush 
 With silent wing my forehead, while I pass 
 Unknown through this serenity of peace, 
 
 Pass to the Councils of the Shades, and see 
 Once more the lofty spirits of the Fathers 
 Conversing there beside the sacred river. 
 
 38 
 
Notes 
 
 "Before the Old Castle of Verona." 
 
 Printed among the "Odi Barbare" of 1889. The 
 castle, before the frowning walls of which the poet is 
 meditating, stands by the river Adige which here 
 flows through Verona and was long the home of the 
 great Veronese family of the Scaligers. The Church 
 of St. Zeno, to which reference is made in the last 
 stanza, is noted as one of the finest examples of the 
 Romanesque in northern Italy. 
 
 "On the Death of the Prince Imperial." 
 
 A superb symphonic presentation of the whole 
 Napoleonic tragedy, beginning with the parallel 
 drawn in the first four stanzas between the Prince 
 Imperial, son of Napoleon III., and the King of 
 Rome, son of the first Napoleon; and closing with 
 the tremendous portrayal of Letitia, mother of the 
 race the "Corsican Niobe" as she stands with her 
 "proud arms" stretched toward the "savage sea," 
 beyond which her children have fallen. In the sev- 
 enth stanza the references are to the coup d'ltat of 
 Napoleon III., which occurred in December, 1852, 
 and to the birth of the Prince Imperial in January 
 (the "Brumaire" of the revolutionary calendar), 1856. 
 Very characteristic is the reproach which Carducci, in 
 the tenth stanza, addresses to the Great Napoleon; 
 39 
 
the poet would have had the Consul put all aside 
 when his true work the humbling of the thrones, the 
 giving of "concordant laws" was done, and retire, a 
 second Cincinnatus, to the "lonely house on the Aiac- 
 cian shore." 
 
 "In the Piazza of San Petronio." 
 
 One of Carducci's most delicate bits of impression- 
 ism. The glamour which the sun's "dying saluta- 
 tion" sheds on the grim towers and solemn church of 
 dark-turreted Bologna, hangs like a golden haze over 
 the whole poem; and in the last stanza one may feel 
 the intensity of the poet's yearning for that antique 
 beauty which has vanished with a vanished time. 
 
 "MlRAMAR." 
 
 The Chateau of Miramar, from which the Arch- 
 duke Maximilian of Austria set out on his ill-fated ex- 
 pedition to Mexico, is situated on the Adriatic, not 
 far from Trieste. The "double gulf" (third stanza) 
 consists of the Gulf of Venice and the Gulf of Trieste, 
 which form practically one sheet of water; and the 
 "turreted cities of the Istrian shore" (whose names 
 I omitted in the translation as unnecessary) are Mug- 
 gia, Pirano, Egida, and Parenzo. Huitzilopotli (stan- 
 za sixteen) is the Mexican god of war. In his own 
 note to the original poem, Carducci explains the 
 rather obscure allusions which occur in the ninth and 
 40 
 
tenth stanzas. "Certain recollections of the Chateau 
 of Miramar that find place in these verses perhaps 
 need elucidation," he writes. "In Maximilian's 
 study, built to resemble the cabin of the flagship 
 'Novara/ which later carried him to Mexico, por- 
 traits of Dante and Goethe are to be seen near where 
 the Archduke was accustomed to sit studying; and 
 there still lies open upon the table an old edition of 
 Castillian romances rare, if I remember rightly, and 
 printed in the Low Countries. In the main hall are 
 engraved a number of Latin maxims. Memorable 
 among them, because of the spot and the man, are 
 these: "Si Fortuna juvat cavete 10111," "Saepe sub 
 dulci melle venena latent," "Non ad astra mollis et 
 terris via," "Vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis erunt." 
 
 "To Giuseppe Garibaldi." 
 
 Written probably on an anniversary of the battle of 
 Mentana, which occurred on November 3d, 1867. 
 "Peter and Caesar," of course, represent church and 
 empire leagued together against Italy, who is strug- 
 gling to throw off the yoke of both. 
 
 "Rome." 
 
 The asterisks after the second stanza mark four 
 verses which I have omitted from my translation, be- 
 cause they consist of political allusions that to an 
 
 . 41 
 
American reader could mean nothing. For the rest, 
 the poem requires no annotation. The original is one 
 of the most harmoniously beautiful compositions in 
 the whole range of modern Italian literature. Only 
 one who, like the poet, has looked down from the 
 Janiculum on the "pictured form" of the Eternal 
 City, who has felt the wonder of her grandeur and 
 the immortal loveliness of her decay, can fully realize 
 how exquisitely, how subtly her charm pervades each 
 word of the poet's Ave. The essential spirit of Rome 
 is there of that Rome who is as truly Mistress of 
 the World to-day, in her empire over men's hearts, 
 as when of old she ruled their lives. 
 
 42 
 
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