To mad dissimilar ends they swerved aside.
Each grave her nationality has pieced
By its own noble breadth, and fortified,
And pinned it deeper to the soil. Forlorn
Of thanks, be, therefore, no one of these graves!
Not Hers,—who, at her husband's side, in scorn,
Outfaced the whistling shot and hissing waves,
Until she felt her little babe unborn
Recoil, within her, from the violent staves
And bloodhounds of the world: at which, her life
Dropt inwards from her eyes, and followed it
Beyond the hunters. Garibaldi's wife
And child died so. And now, the sea-weeds fit
Her body like a proper shroud and coif,
And murmurously the ebbing waters grit
The little pebbles, while she lies interred
In the sea-sand. Perhaps, ere dying thus,
She looked up in his face which never stirred
From its clenched anguish, as to make excuse
For leaving him for his, if so she erred.
Well he remembers that she could not choose.
A memorable grave! Another is
At Genoa, where a king may fitly lie,—
Who bursting that heroic heart of his
At lost Novara, that he could not die,
Though thrice into the cannon's eyes for this
He plunged his shuddering steed, and felt the sky
Reel back between the fire-shocks;—stripped away
The ancestral ermine ere the smoke had cleared,
And naked to the soul, that none might say
His kingship covered what was base and bleared
With treason, he went out an exile, yea,
An exiled patriot! Let him be revered.
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CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.
