ean to stomp.
All round the glad church lie old bottles
With gunpowder stopped,
Which will be, when the Image re-enters,
Religiously popped;
And at night from the crest of Calvano
Great bonfires will hang,
On the plain will the trumpets join chorus,
And more poppers bang. 280
At all events, come-to the garden
As far as the wall;
See me tap with a hoe on the plaster
Till out there shall fall
A scorpion with wide angry nippers!
--"Such trifles!" you say?
Fortu, in my England at home,
Men meet gravely to-day
And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
Be righteous and wise 290
--If 'twere proper, Scirocco should vanish
In black from the skies!
NOTES:
"The Italian in England." An Italian patriot who has taken
part in an unsuccessful revolt against Austrian dominance,
reflects upon the incidents of his escape and flight from
Italy to the end that if he ever should have a thought
beyond the welfare of Italy, he would wish first for the
discomfiture of his enemies and then to go and see once
more the noble woman who at the risk of her own life
helped him to escape. Though there is no exact historical
incident upon which this poem is founded, it has a
historical background. The Charles referred to (lines 8,
11, 20, 116, 125) is Charles Albert, Prince of Carignano, of
the younger branch of the house of Savoy. His having
played with the patriot in his youth, as the poem says, is
quite possible, for Charles was brought up as a simple
citizen in a public school, and one of his chief friends was
Alberta Nota, a writer of liberal principles, whom he
made his secretary. As indicated in the poem, Charles
at first declared himself in sympathy, though in a somewhat
lukewarm manner, with the rising led by Santa Rosa against
Austrian domination in 1823, and upon the abdication of
Victor Emanuel he became regent of Turin. But when
the king Charles Felix issued a denunciation against the
new government, Charles Albert succumbed to the king's
threats and left his friends in the lurch. Later the Austrians
marched into the country, Santa Rosa was forced
to retreat from Turin, and, with his friends, he who might
well have been the very patriot of th
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