The eagle with his black wing flouts
The breadth and beauty of your land.

Yet not in vain, although in vain,
O, men of Brescia! on the day
Of loss past hope, I heard you say
Your welcome to the noble pain.

You said: "Since so it is, good by,
Sweet life, high hope; but whatsoe'er
May be or must, no tongue shall dare
To tell, The Lombard feared to die.""

You said (there shall be answer fit):
"And if our children must obey,
They must; but, thinking on this day,
"T will less debase them to submit."

You said (O, not in vain you said):

66

Haste, brothers, haste, while yet we may; The hours ebb fast of this one day, While blood may yet be nobly shed."

Ah! not for idle hatred, not
For honor, fame, nor self-applause,
But for the glory of the cause,
You did what will not be forgot.

And though the stranger stand, 't is true,
By force and fortune's right he stands,
By fortune, which is in God's hands,
And strength, which yet shall spring in you.

This voice did on my spirit fall,
Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost:
""T is better to have fought and lost
Than never to have fought at all."
Arthur Hugh Clough.

Piedmont.

ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.

VENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who, having learned thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

A VOICE FROM PIEDMONT.

John Milton.

BEND from that heaven, whose visioned glories gave,

Thou blind old bard, the splendor of thy song,

And give the godlike words which mortals crave,
To speak, exulting, o'er the fallen wrong!

For lo! the avenger of that hour of blood

Has heard at last thy summons, stern and grand,
Has freed the children of the slaughtered brood,
In the cold Alpine land!

O, at the tardy word, whose thunder broke
The chains of ages from that suffering flock,
Methinks the mountain's giant soul awoke,

And thrilled beneath the eternal ribs of rock!
The ancient glaciers brightened in the sky;

Beneath them, shouting, burst the jubilant rills,
And the white Alps of Piedmont made reply
To the free Vaudois hills!

And far below, in the green pasture-vales,
The Waldense shepherd knelt upon the sod,
While chapel-bells chimed on the mountain gales
And every châlet sent its hymn to God!
Matron and sire, and sweet-voiced peasant-maid,
And the strong hunter from the steeps of snow,
Looked up to Him, whose help their fathers prayed,
Through years of blood and woe.

Build now the sepulchres of martyrs old:

Gather the scattered bones from every glen Where the red waves of pitiless slaughter rolled,

When fell those brave and steadfast-hearted men! Piedmont is free! and brightening with the years,

Shall Freedom's sun upon her mountains shine; While her proud children say, with joyous tears, The glory, Lord, be thine!"

Bayard Taylor.

BUT

THE VAUDOIS.

whence came they who for the Saviour Lord

Have long borne witness as the Scriptures teach ?

Ages ere Valdo raised his voice to preach

In Gallic ears the unadulterate Word,

Their fugitive progenitors explored

Subalpine vales, in quest of safe retreats,

Where that pure Church survives, though summer heats
Open a passage to the Romish sword

Far as it dares to follow. Herbs self-sown,
And fruitage gathered from the chestnut wood,
Nourish the sufferers then; and mists, that brood
O'er chasms with new-fallen obstacles bestrown,
Protect them; and the eternal snow that daunts
Aliens is God's good winter for their haunts.

William Wordsworth.

THE VAUDOIS VALLEYS.

ES! thou hast met the sun's last smile

YES!
From the haunted hills of Rome;

By many a bright Egean isle

Thou hast seen the billows foam.

From the silence of the Pyramid,

Thou hast watched the solemn flow
Of the Nile, that with its waters hid
The ancient realm below.

Thy heart hath burned, as shepherds sung
Some wild and warlike strain,

Where the Moorish horn once proudly rung
Through the pealing hills of Spain.

And o'er the lonely Grecian streams
Thou hast heard the laurels moan,

With a sound yet murmuring in thy dreams
Of the glory that is gone.

But go thou to the pastoral vales
Of the Alpine mountains old,
If thou wouldst hear immortal tales
By the wind's deep whispers told!

Go, if thou lov'st the soil to tread
Where man hath nobly striven,
And life, like incense, hath been shed,
An offering unto Heaven.

For o'er the snows and round the pines
Hath swept a noble flood;

The nurture of the peasant's vines

Hath been the martyr's blood!

A spirit stronger than the sword
And loftier than despair,

Through all the heroic region poured,
Breathes in the generous air.

A memory clings to every steep

Of long-enduring faith,

And the sounding streams glad record keep Of courage unto death.