The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 4/Number 26/Italy, 1859

by James Russell Lowell

ITALY, 1859.

Wait a little: do we not wait?
Louis Napoleon is not Fate;
Francis Joseph is not Time;
There's One hath swifter feet than Crime;
Cannon-parliaments settle nought;
Venice is Austria's,—whose is Thought?
Minié is good, but, spite of change,
Gutenberg's gun has the longer range.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits forever!

Wait, we say; our years are long;
Men are weak, but Man is strong;
Since the stars first curved their rings,
We have looked on many things;
Great wars come and great wars go,
Wolf-tracks light on polar snow;
We shall see him come and gone,
This second-hand Napoleon.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits forever!

We saw the elder Corsican,
And Clotho muttered as she span,
While crowned lackeys bore the train
Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne,—
"Sister, stint not length of thread!
Sister, stay the scissors dread!
On St. Helen's granite bleak,
Hark, the vulture whets his beak!"
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits forever!

The Bonapartes, we know their bees,
That wade in honey, red to the knees;
Their patent-reaper, its sheaves sleep sound
In doorless garners underground:
We know false Glory's spendthrift race,
Pawning nations for feathers and lace;
It may be short, it may be long,—
"'Tis reckoning-day!" sneers unpaid Wrong.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits forever!

The cock that wears the eagle's skin
Can promise what he ne'er could win;
Slavery reaped for fine words sown,
System for all and rights for none,
Despots at top, a wild clan below,
Such is the Gaul from long ago:
Wash the black from the Ethiop's face,
Wash the past out of man or race!
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits forever!

'Neath Gregory's throne a spider swings
And snares the people for the kings:
"Luther is dead; old quarrels pass;
The stake's black scars are healed with grass":
So dreamers prate;—did man e'er live
Saw priest or woman yet forgive?
But Luther's broom is left, and eyes
Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits forever!

Smooth sails the ship of either realm,
Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm;
But we look down the deeps and mark
Silent workers in the dark,
Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs,
Old instincts hardening to new beliefs:
Patience, a little; learn to wait;.
Hours are long on the clock of Fate.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
Darkness is strong, and so is Sin,
But only God endures forever!

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