rprise,
When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels!
--God! how the house feels.

At first happy news came, in gay letters moiled
With my kisses, of camp-life and glory, and how
They both loved me, and soon, coming home to be spoiled,
In return would fan off every fly from my brow
With their green laurel bough.

Then was triumph at Turin. 'Ancona was free!'
And some one came out of the cheers in the street,
With a face pale as stone to say something to me.
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet
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
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.

And letters still came--shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand. I was not to faint,
One loved me for two . . . would be with me ere long,
And 'Viva Italia' _he_ died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint.

{ Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the West by the sea: p2.jpg}

My Nanni would add, 'he was safe and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls . . . was imprest
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossessed,
To live on for the rest.'

On which, without pause, up the telegraph line,
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta--_Shot_.
_Tell his mother_. Ah, ah! 'his,' 'their' mother: not 'mine.'
No voice says '_my_ mother' again to me. What!
You think Guido forgot?

Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,
They drop earth's affection, conceive not of woe?
I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through that Love and Sorrow which reconciled so
The Above and Below.

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.
'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, wick