SWORD AND SICKLE.

“’Mid the harvest-shining plain Where the peasant heaps his grain In the garner of his foe.”

In the noontide, safe and free, Basks the plain of Lombardy. Never now, nor near nor far Looms the lurid form of War That to overspread it came With her wings of smoky flame. Unmanured with blood the plain Yields in peace its yearly grain; And the milk-white broad-browed pair Of huge bullocks in the glare Drag the fruit of Freedom’s tillage Through each straggling Lombard village Which no Croat thirsts to pillage. Not a foe, save where unseen In the rice-swamp’s treacherous green Fever lurks, while wade and reap Through the sparkling waters deep Girls ill-sheltered from the sun, Which shoots down to scorch and stun, By their crimson kerchiefs light, And who there in Fever’s spite Cheer their souls with laugh and song As the noontide creeps along; Not a foe, save when o’erflows Adige big with melted snows, Or when Po’s dark whirling foam Threatens many a thriving home, Rolling all its bridges under With a dull unceasing thunder, Till it sweeps ere close of day Bridge and dyke and home away. Through the broad Subalpine plain Peace and work and freedom reign. Here and there in monstrous heaps Some vast ossuary keeps For men’s wondering eyes the bones Of the nation’s slaughtered sons; But no other traces show Where a few short years ago Countless balls of iron ploughed Through the serried quivering crowd— Where the broadcast Austrian lead Fell on furrows live and dead— Where for miles and miles were heaped The human harvests freshly reaped— Where the routed fled like chaff At the canon’s thunderous laugh, While the gun-wheels made red mud Of men weltering in their blood. Times are changed, and memories hold In the breasts but of the old. On Custozza’s once red earth By the Lombard peasant’s hearth Now the Austrian may sit Where no brows with hate shall knit: Who would dream that there can be Such a thing as tyranny? Italy appeals no longer To God’s throne against the stronger; And the Poet loves her now For the beauty of her brow, Not for that great crown of woe Whence the blood-drops used to flow. Lands are freed, and lands enslaved; But your name is there engraved In the hearts of those now freed Ye who helped them in their need! Nor do they remember now Those who lent them all the glow Of their genius and their feeling, And Compassion’s balm that’s healing, And the thunder of their curse In a heaven-shaking verse. Reckon not on thanks for long, Ye who fight with sword or song For the weak against the strong: Give your help for justice’ sake, Caring no reward to take. Freedom’s face is not less fair For remembering not your share; And the sheaves of sacred wheat, Which spring up beneath her feet From the liberated plain, Not less full of golden grain. Years ago one day I stood, In the autumn’s sunset flood, Looking down with sweeping sight From a bastion’s terraced height On the then unconquered plain Of the fair and French Lorraine. Scarce was autumn’s first leaf yellow; Ripened Earth had made air mellow. Like a snake inert and blue, Winding slowly corn-fields through, Wound the broad Moselle afar To the horizon’s utmost bar, Catching on each burnished fold Restless gleams of molten gold Till the sun was near to sink, When it caught a flaming pink From the crimson clouds slow sailing Where the amber light was failing. And surveying that expanse, What, I thought, is fair as France? Now the Prussian sentries stand Where I stood, and scan the land, Which for ever seems their own, With their ugly Prussian frown; And the sullen land has nought But the freedom of its thought, Of its thought that hopes and hates And from year to year awaits. And what of thee upon whose head All evil’s phials have been shed— Thou whom those who now have gotten Their own freedom, have forgotten— Thou whose name is never heard, Thou whose hope is aye deferred, Thou whose tongue thy foes outroot, Thou whose sons they chain and shoot— Poland, heiress of the knout? Lo, the century grows old And thy hour has not yet tolled. On thy form benumbed and bruised, Whence the life-blood half has oozed, Lies the dark Colossus still Whom his own sons now would kill— Tormentors that like vipers start From his huge frame’s every part; But he holds thee all the tighter While thy bloodless face grows whiter, And his limbs that on thee weigh Grow more rotten day by day. Hark! I hear a muffled sound Deep beneath the frozen ground Where a buried Poland pines In the dark Siberian mines, In the sunless vaults that ape Those of Hell in gloom and shape, Where the gangs who death await Unlearn to think, but not to hate: Is’t a growl of joy that runs Where are chained half Poland’s sons? Ay, a growl of joy it is To each mine’s extremities, And for once Despair has laughed In each black pestiferous shaft: He who sent them there lies dead On his gory Imperial bed— He who made them walk in chains, In long goaded staggering trains, Through the endless snow-clad plains To the grave in which they lie, Not yet dead, but soon to die: Even he has found his hour, Murdered in his boundless power By his own, and rots in death As they rot who here draw breath.