13-->Both boys dead! but that’s out of nature.  We all
   Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
’Twere imbecile hewing out roads to a wall,
   And when Italy’s made, for what end is it done
      If we have not a son?

Ah! ah! ah! when Gaeta’s taken, what then?
   When the fair, wicked queen sits no more at her sport
Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?
   When your guns of Cavalli, with final retort,
      Have cut the game short—

When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,
   When your flag takes all Heaven for its white, green, and red,
When you have your country from mountain to sea,
   When King Victor has Italy’s crown on his head,
      (And I have my dead)

What then?  Do not mock me!  Ah, ring your bells low!
   And burn your lights faintly.  My country is there,
Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow.
   My Italy’s there—with my brave civic Pair,
      To disfranchise despair.

Forgive me.  Some women bear children in strength,
   And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn,
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
   Into wail such as this! and we sit on forlorn
      When the man-child is born.

Dead! one of them shot by the sea in the west!
   And one of them shot in the east by the sea!
Both! both my boys!  If, in keeping the feast,
   You want a great song for your Italy free,
      Let none look at me!

NATURE’S LADY.

Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, “A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This child I to myself will take,
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.

“Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me
The Girl, in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.

“She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm,
Of mute insensate things.

“The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willows bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden’s form
By silent sympathy.

“The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.”

TO A SKYLARK.

   Hail to thee, blithe spirit—
      Bird thou never wert—
   That from heaven or near it
      Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

   Higher still and higher
      From the earth thou springest,
   Like a cloud of fire;
      The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

   In the golden lightning
      Of the sunken sun,
   O’er