MOTHER AND POET. (Turin, after news from Gaeta, 1861.) BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. EAD! One of them shot in the sea by the east, And one of them shot in the west by the sea! Dead! both my boys! when you sit at the feast, And are wanting a great song for Italy free, Let none look at me! Yet I was a poetess only last year, And good at my art, for a woman, men said; But this woman, this, who is agonized here, - The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head What art can a woman be good at? O, vain! What art is she good at, but hurting her breast With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain? Ah, boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you pressed, And I proud, by that test. What art's for a woman? to hold on her knees Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat Cling, strangle a little! to sew by degrees To teach them. It stings there! I made them, indeed, The tyrant cast out. And when their eyes flashed . . O my beautiful eyes! . God, how the house feels! At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled Then was triumph at Turin: "Ancona was free!” While they cheered in the street. I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong, My Nanni would add, "He was safe, and aware -Shot. On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line No voice says "my mother" again to me. What! Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with heaven, not O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark To the face of thy mother! consider, I pray, How we common mothers stand desolate, mark, Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away, And no last word to say! Both boys dead? but that's out of nature. We all Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one. 'T were imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall; Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta 's taken, what then? When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee, 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 east, |