Fair in her fair days rose Rocca Paolina:
With cannon did her buttressed ramparts bristle!
Pope Paul the third planned her one morn between a
Text of Bembo and his Latin Missal.

" Too freely do my sheep who pasture under
Perugia's precipices stray from me:
For chastening, God the Father hath the thunder,
And I, His vicar, will use artillery.

" Coelo tonantem Horace sings, and louder
Than the stormwind God speaketh in His rage:
" Return, my sheep, " I 'll cry with shot and powder,
" To Sharon's and Engaddi's pasturage. "

" Yet hearken, since the Augustan age, Sangallo,
With us renews its glories, consummate,
Worthy of Rome and thee, a work to hallow
The golden years of our Pontificate."

He spoke, and to defend her maiden honour
Sangallo arched her round on every side,
And cast a veil of snow-white marble on her
And girdled her with towers for her pride.

In Latin distichs she was celebrated
By Molza: and the Paraclete rained down
In bombs and from the mortars unabated
His more than sevenfold gifts upon the town.

And yet the people are a dog, which biteth
The stones it cannot hurl, as well ye know,
And specially on fortresses delighteth
To exercise its iron fangs, and so

To shatter them, then lies with joyous barking
Stretched on the ruined walls, till up it springs
And rushes off, some novel quarry marking,
To other stones and other cudgellings.

So in Perugia it befell. Where dim in
The shade of that stern pile the city lay,
Love laugheth now, and merrily the women
And children prattle in the sun of May.

And through the spacious azure ever higher
The bright sun mounts, till far Abruzzi's snows
Glisten, and yet with more intense desire
Of Love on Umbrian hill and pasture glows.

Where in the rosy light serenely rising
The mountains interweave their perfect lines,
Until each tender contour melts and dies in
The golden violet haze that o'er them shines.

Is 't, Italy, thy fragrant hair strewn over
Thy nuptial bed, 'twixt seas to east and west,
Which 'neath the kisses of th' eternal lover
Trembles in scattered ringlets to thy breast?

What'er it be, I feel Spring with me blending,
And all my thoughts a sapphire radiance stains;
I feel the sighs, ascending and descending
'Twixt earth and heaven, throb through all my veins.

Each novel sight mine eager eye descrieth
Awakes some old affection in my heart;
" Love, Love!" my tongue to earth and heaven crieth
In words that from my lips unbidden start.

Do I embrace the heavens, or doth the ocean
Of Being absorb me in its timeless calm? . . .
Ah, this poor verse expressing my emotion
Is but one note of the Eternal Psalm.

From Umbrian villages, which love to bury
Themselves in dark rifts of the Apennine;
From Tyrrhene castles standing solitary
Above the green hills rich in corn and wine;

From plains, whence 'mid the ploughed-up bones and armour
Dread Rome still threatens in defeat's black day;
From German forts, which watched the ancient farmer,
Like nesting falcons brooding o'er their prey;

From gloomy-towered palaces the nation
Built that she might her foreign lords defy;
From churches which, as if in supplication,
Stretch forth long marble arms unto the sky;

From happy suburbs up the hillside creeping
Towards the city, old and dark and hoar,
Like villeins hasting homeward after reaping
To share the grain that fills the threshing-floor;

From convents, nestled in the valleys, ringing
Their bells o'er suburb and o'er city-street,
Like cuckoos in the leafless branches singing
Two notes, where joy and pain so strangely meet;

From roads and from piazzas rich in story,
Where, e'en as one blithe morn of May attires
The oaks and rose-trees in their summer glory,
Burst into bloom the Free Art of our sires;

O'er fields where now the tender green blades quiver,
O'er vineyards clinging to the steep hillside,
O'er lakes and many a far-off shining river,
O'er woods and snow-clad summits far and wide;

From sunny cots, o'er which the blue smoke lingers,
'Mid all the noisy mills and thundering weirs,
Leaps up one song sung by a thousand singers,
One hymn wherein are blent a thousand prayers:

" Greeting, ye human races bowed with sorrow!
All passes, naught can die: too much we dare
To hate and suffer. Learn to love! The morrow
Shall thus be holier and the world more fair."

What is that radiance, like some new Aurora's
Greeting the sun, on yonder mountain height?
Do then Madonnas as of old pass o'er us,
Treading these hills on paths of rosy light?

Madonnas Perugino saw descending,
Thro' pearly April sunsets pure and mild,
With outstretched arms, in adoration bending
Divinely meek before the Holy Child?

Nay, 'tis a new Madonna whom we call on,
Justice and Love, the Ideal for which we strive!
Blessed be those who for her sake have fallen,
Blessed be those who for her sake shall live!

For Priests and Tyrants naught care I! Unsteady,
Infirm, and old as their old Gods are they.
I cursed the Pope ten years ago, I 'm ready
To reconcile myself with him to-day.

The poor old man! Who knows if he is yearning
In vain for love? E'en now his thoughts may be
To his own Sinigaglia fondly turning
Where it lies mirrored in the Adrian sea.

Open the Vatican! I would embrace thee,
Who ne'er from out thy self-made prison wilt pass.
Come, Citizen Mastai, 'twill not disgrace thee;
The toast is " Freedom," drain with me one glass!