ch on warm and cold days I withdrew
From my heart's ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,
And wait thy weeding; yet here's eglantine,
Here's ivy!--take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul their roots are left in mine.

CASA GUIDI WINDOWS

A Poem, IN TWO PARTS

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.

This poem contains the impressions of the writer upon events in
Tuscany of which she was a witness. "From a window," the critic may
demur. She bows to the objection in the very title of her work. No
continuous narrative nor exposition of political philosophy is
attempted by her. It is a simple story of personal impressions, whose
only value is in the intensity with which they were received, as
proving her warm affection for a beautiful and unfortunate country,
and the sincerity with which they are related, as indicating her own
good faith and freedom from partisanship.

Of the two parts of this poem, the first was written nearly three
years ago, while the second resumes the actual situation of 1851. The
discrepancy between the two parts is a sufficient guarantee to the
public of the truthfulness of the writer, who, though she certainly
escaped the epidemic "falling sickness" of enthusiasm for Pio Nono,
takes shame upon herself that she believed, like a woman, some royal
oaths, and lost sight of the probable consequences of some obvious
popular defects. If the discrepancy should be painful to the reader,
let him understand that to the writer it has been more so. But such
discrepancies we are called upon to accept at every hour by the
conditions of our nature, implying the interval between aspiration
and performance, between faith and disillusion, between hope and
fact.

"O trusted broken prophecy,
O richest fortune sourly crost,
Born for the future, to the future lost!"

Nay, not lost to the future in this case. The future of Italy shall
not be disinherited.

FLORENCE, 1851.

CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.

PART I.

I heard last night a little child go singing
'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,
_O bella liberta, O bella!_--stringing
The same words still on notes he went in search
So high for, you concluded the upspringing
Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch
Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green,