Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.
Saint Ambrose
By Giuseppe Giusti (1809–1850)Y
Because of certain jests I made of late,
And, for my putting rogues in pillory,
Accuse me of being anti-German. Wait,
And hear a thing that happened recently
When wandering here and there one day as fate
Led me, by some odd accident I ran
On the old church St. Ambrose, at Milan.
The young son of one Sandro,—one of those
Troublesome heads,—an author of romance,—
Promessi Sposi,—your Excellency knows
The book perhaps?—has given it a glance?
Ah, no? I see! God give your brain repose:
With graver interests occupied, your head
To all such stuff as literature is dead.
Of Northern soldiers, of Croatians, say,
And of Bohemians, standing there in groups
As stiff as dry poles stuck in vineyards,—nay,
As stiff as if impaled, and no one stoops
Out of the plumb of soldierly array;
All stand, with whiskers and mustache of tow,
Before their God like spindles in a row.
That being rained down, as it were, and thrust,
Into that herd of human cattle, I
Could not suppress a feeling of disgust
Unknown, I fancy, to your Excellency,
By reason of your office. Pardon! I must
Say the church stank of heated grease, and that
The very altar-candles seemed of fat.
The mystic wafer, from the band that stood
About the altar, came a sudden note
Of sweetness over my disdainful mood:
A voice that, speaking from the brazen throat
Of warlike trumpets, came like the subdued
Moan of a people bound in sore distress,
And thinking on lost hopes and happiness.
That song the Lombards, there, dying with thirst,
Send up to God,—“Lord, from the native roof,”—
O’er countless thrilling hearts the song has burst,
And here I, whom its magic put to proof,
Beginning to be no longer I, immersed
Myself amidst those tallowy fellow-men
As if they had been of my land and kin.
And ours, and played, too, as it should be played:
It drives old grudges out when such divine
Music as that mounts up into your head!
But when the piece was done, back to my line
I crept again, and there I should have stayed,
But that just then, to give me another turn,
From those mole-mouths a hymn began to yearn:
On unseen wings, up from the holy fane:
It was a prayer, and seemed like a lament,
Of such a pensive, grave, pathetic strain
That in my soul it never shall be spent;
And how such heavenly harmony in the brain
Of those thick-skulled barbarians should dwell
I must confess it passes me to tell.
Of the songs heard in childhood, which the soul
Learns from belovéd voices, to repeat
To its own anguish in the days of dole:
A thought of the dear mother, a regret,
A longing for repose and love, the whole
Anguish of distant exile seemed to run
Over my heart and leave it all undone:
Tenderer thoughts and stronger and more clear:
These men, I mused, the selfsame despot king,
Who rules in Slavic and Italian fear,
Tears from their homes and arms that round them cling,
And drives them slaves thence, to keep us slaves here:
From their familiar fields afar they pass
Like herds to winter in some strange morass.
Derided, solitary, dumb, they go:
Blind instruments of many-eyed Rapine
And purposes they share not and scarce know;
And this fell hate that makes a gulf between
The Lombard and the German aids the foe
Who tramples both divided, and whose bane
Is in the love and brotherhood of men.
And in a land that hates them! Who shall say
That at the bottom of their hearts they bear
Love for our tyrant? I should like to lay
They ’ve our hate for him in their pockets! Here,
But that I turned in haste and broke away,
I should have kissed a corporal stiff and tall,
And like a scarecrow stuck against the wall.