A WELCOME TO GARIBALDI.
ON HIS REPORTED BANISHMENT FROM ITALY.
OLD hero, we send thee a greeting!
Thou art banished, they tell us: then come!
For wherever free pulses are beating,
That land thou wilt know as thy home.
What matters the timid decision
Of the fellow who pilfered a throne;
Or thy king's, whom his people's derision
Leaves abject, unloved and alone?
We honor thee more, though defeated,
As a prisoner, an exile perchance,
Than the libertine coward who cheated
Thy hopes for the tyrant of France.
Of us thou art worthy—we know it—
And proclaim thee a citizen free;
But, what's better—how proudly we show it!—
We feel ourselves worthy of thee.
Forget what the monarchs call treason
To the privilege of title and crown,—
Merest insults to manhood and reason,
Which briefly the world will disown.
Grand creature, unselfish, pure-hearted,
In an age that is meaner than mire,
'Twas no wonder the gold-mongers started,
Red shirt, from thy pathway of fire!
No wonder they shrank to the bowels,
And inquired what the mystery meant,
While the ring of thy rusty spur-rowels
Was shaking their triple per cent.!
No wonder they bound thee, gray lion,
Or will banish thee, fearing to kill;
But they made each Italian a scion
To grow in the way of thy will.
Remember Rotondo! 'tis planted
With a seed that shall rise unto good,
When the reapers stride forward undaunted,
And garner the harvest in blood!
Rest with us! and tell us the story
Of a city that floats on the sea,—
Of the Medici's birth-place and glory,
More glorious in this—they were free—
