I.
Emperor, Emperor!
From the centre to the shore,
        From the Seine back to the Rhine,
Stood eight millions up and swore
        By their manhood’s right divine
So to elect and legislate,
        This man should renew the line
Broken in a strain of fate
And leagued kings at Waterloo,
When the people’s hands let go.
                Emperor
                Evermore.


II.
With a universal shout
They took the old regalia out
From an open grave that day;
        From a grave that would not close,
Where the first Napoleon lay
        Expectant, in repose,
As still as Merlin, with his conquering face
        Turned up in its unquenchable appeal
To men and heroes of the advancing race,—
        Prepared to set the seal
Of what has been on what shall be.
                Emperor
                Evermore.

III.
The thinkers stood aside
        To let the nation act.
        Some hated the new-constituted fact
Of empire, as pride treading on their pride.
Some quailed, lest what was poisonous in the past
        Should graft itself in that Druidic bough
                On this green Now.
Some cursed, because at last
The open heavens to which they had looked in vain
For many a golden fall of marvellous rain
Were closed in brass; and some
Wept on because a gone thing could not come;
And some were silent, doubting all things for
That popular conviction,—evermore
                Emperor.



IV.
That day I did not hate
        Nor doubt, nor quail nor curse.
I, reverencing the people, did not bate
My reverence of their deed and oracle,
Nor vainly prate
        Of better and of worse
Against the great conclusion of their will.
        And yet, O voice and verse,
Which God set in me to acclaim and sing
Conviction, exaltation, aspiration,
We gave no music to the patent thing,
        Nor spared a holy rhythm to throb and swim
        About the name of him
Translated to the sphere of domination
        By democratic passion!
I was not used, at least,
        Nor can be, now or then,
To stroke the ermine beast
        On any kind of throne
        (Though builded by a nation for its own),
And swell the surging choir for kings of men—
                “Emperor
                Evermore.”


V.
        But now, Napoleon, now
That, leaving far behind the purple throng
        Of vulgar monarchs, thou
        Tread’st higher in thy deed
        Than stair of throne can lead,
        To help in the hour of wrong
        The broken hearts of nations to be strong,—
        Now, lifted as thou art
        To the level of pure song,
We stand to meet thee on these Alpine snows!
        And while the palpitating peaks break out
Ecstatic from somnambular repose
        With answers to the presence and the shout,
We, poets of the people, who take part
        With elemental justice, natural right,
Join in our echoes also, nor refrain.
        We meet thee, O Napoleon, at this height
At last, and find thee great enough to praise.
Receive the poet’s chrism, which smells beyond
        The priest’s, and pass thy ways;—
An English poet warns thee to maintain
God’s word, not England’s:—let His truth be true
And all men liars! with His truth respond
To all men’s lie. Exalt the sword and smite
On that long anvil of the Apennine
Where Austria forged the Italian chain in view
Of seven consenting nations, sparks of fine Admonitory light,
Till men’s eyes wink before convictions new.
Flash in God’s justice to the world’s amaze,
Sublime Deliverer!—after many days
Found worthy of the deed thou art come to do—
                Emperor.
                Evermore.

VI.
        But Italy, my Italy,
                Can it last, this gleam?
        Can she live and be strong,
                Or is it another dream
Like the rest we have dreamed so long?
        And shall it, must it be,
That after the battle-cloud has broken
                She will die off again
                Like the rain,
        Or like a poet’s song
                Sung of her, sad at the end
        Because her name is Italy,—
                Die and count no friend?
Is it true,—may it be spoken,—
        That she who has lain so still,
With a wound in her breast,
And a flower in her hand,
And a grave-stone under her head,
        While every nation at will
Beside her has dared to stand,
And flout her with pity and scorn,
        Saying “She is at rest,
She is fair, she is dead,
And, leaving room in her stead
To Us who are later born,
        This is certainly best!”
Saying “Alas, she is fair,
Very fair, but dead,—give place,
And so we have room for the race.”
—Can it be true, be true,
That she lives anew?
That she rises up at the shout of her sons,
        At the trumpet of France,
And lives anew?—is it true
        That she has not moved in a trance,
As in Forty-eight?
When her eyes were troubled with blood
Till she knew not friend from foe,
Till her hand was caught in a strait
Of her cerement and baffled so
        From doing the deed she would;
And her weak foot stumbled across
The grave of a king,
And down she dropt at heavy loss,
                And we gloomily covered her face and said,
        “We have dreamed the thing;
                She is not alive, but dead.”



VII.
Now, shall we say
        Our Italy lives indeed?
And if it were not for the beat and bray
Of drum and trump of martial men,
Should we feel the underground heave and strain,
        Where heroes left their dust as a seed
Sure to emerge one day?
And if it were not for the rhythmic march
        Of France and Piedmont’s double hosts,
        Should we hear the ghosts
Thrill through ruined aisle and arch,
        Throb along the frescoed wall,
Whisper an oath by that divine
They left in picture, book, and stone,
        That Italy is not dead at all?
Ay, if it were not for the tears in our eyes,
These tears of a sudden passionate joy,
        Should we see her arise
From the place where the wicked are overthrown,
Italy, Italy—loosed at length
        From the tyrant’s thrall,
Pale and calm in her strength?
Pale as the silver cross of Savoy
When the hand that bears the flag is brave,
And not a breath is stirring, save
        What is blown
Over the war-trump’s lip of brass,
Ere Garibaldi forces the pass!


VIII.
        Ay, it is so, even so.
        Ay, and it shall be so.
Each broken stone that long ago
She flung behind her as she went
In discouragement and bewilderment
Through the cairns of Time, and missed her way
Between to-day and yesterday,
        Up springs a living man.
And each man stands with his face in the light
        Of his own drawn sword,
Ready to do what a hero can.
        Wall to sap, or river to ford,
Cannon to front, or foe to pursue,
Still ready to do, and sworn to be true,
        As a man and a patriot can.
        Piedmontese, Neapolitan,
Lombard, Tuscan, Romagnole,
Each man’s body having a soul,—
Count how many they stand,
All of them sons of the land,
        Every live man there
Allied to a dead man below,
        And the deadest with blood to spare
To quicken a living hand
In case it should ever be slow.
Count how many they come
To the beat of Piedmont’s drum,
        With faces keener and grayer
        Than swords of the Austrian slayer,
All set against the foe.
                “Emperor
                Evermore.”


IX.
Out of the dust where they ground them;
        Out of the holes where they dogged them;
Out of the hulks where they wound them
        In iron, tortured and flogged them;
Out of the streets where they chased them,
        Taxed them, and then bayonetted them;
Out of the homes where they spied on them
        (Using their daughters and wives);
        Out of the church where they fretted them,
Rotted their souls and debased them,
        Trained them to answer with knives,
Then cursed them all at their prayers!—
Out of cold lands, not theirs,
Where they exiled them, starved them, lied on them;
Back they come like a wind, in vain
        Cramped up in the hills, that roars its road
The stronger into the open plain,
Or like a fire that burns the hotter
        And longer for the crust of cinder,
Serving better the ends of the potter;
        Or like a restrainèd word of God,
        Fulfilling itself by what seems to hinder.
                “Emperor
                Evermore.”

X.

Shout for France and Savoy!
        Shout for the helper and doer.
Shout for the good sword’s ring,
        Shout for the thought still truer.
Shout for the spirits at large
Who passed for the dead this spring,
        Whose living glory is sure.
Shout for France and Savoy!
Shout for the council and charge!
        Shout for the head of Cavour;
And shout for the heart of a King
That’s great with a nation’s joy!
        Shout for France and Savoy!


XI.
Take up the child, Macmahon, though
        Thy hand be red
        From Magenta’s dead,
And riding on, in front of the troop,
        In the dust of the whirlwind of war
Through the gate of the city of Milan, stoop
And take up the child to thy saddle-bow,
Nor fear the touch as soft as a flower of his smile as clear as a star!
Thou hast a right to the child, we say,
Since the women are weeping for joy as they
Who, by thy help and from this day,
        Shall be happy mothers indeed.
They are raining flowers from terrace and roof:
        Take up the flower in the child.
While the shout goes up of a nation freed
        And heroically self-reconciled,
Till the snow on that peaked Alp aloof
Starts, as feeling God’s finger anew,
And all those cold white marble fires
Of mounting saints on the Duomo-spires
        Flicker against the Blue.
                “Emperor
                Evermore.”


XII.
        Ay, it is He,
Who rides at the King’s right hand!
Leave room to his horse and draw to the side,
        Nor press too near in the ecstasy
Of a newly delivered impassioned land:
He is moved, you see,
        He who has done it all.
They call it a cold stern face;
        But this is Italy
Who rises up to her place!—
For this he fought in his youth,
Of this he dreamed in the past;
        The lines of the resolute mouth
        Tremble a little at last.
        Cry, he has done it all!
                “Emperor
                Evermore.”



XIII.
It is not strange that he did it,
        Though the deed may seem to strain
To the wonderful, unpermitted,
        For such as lead and reign.
But he is strange, this man:
        The people’s instinct found him
(A wind in the dark that ran
Through a chink where was no door),
        And elected him and crowned him
                Emperor
                Evermore.



XIV.
Autocrat? let them scoff,
        Who fail to comprehend
That a ruler incarnate of
        The people must transcend
All common king-born kings;
These subterranean springs
A sudden outlet winning
        Have special virtues to spend.
The people’s blood runs through him,
        Dilates from head to foot,
        Creates him absolute,
And from this great beginning
        Evokes a greater end
To justify and renew him—
                Emperor
                Evermore.



XV.
What! did any maintain
That God or the people (think!)
Could make a marvel in vain?—
        Out of the water-jar there,
Draw wine that none could drink?
Is this a man like the rest,
        This miracle, made unaware
        By a rapture of popular air,
And caught to the place that was best?
You think he could barter and cheat
        As vulgar diplomates use,
With the people’s heart in his breast?
Prate a lie into shape
Lest truth should cumber the road;
        Play at the fast and loose
Till the world is strangled with tape;
Maim the soul’s complete
        To fit the hole of a toad;
And filch the dogman’s meat
        To feed the offspring of God?



XVI.
Nay, but he, this wonder,
        He cannot palter nor prate,
Though many around him and under,
With intellects trained to the curve,
Distrust him in spirit and nerve
        Because his meaning is straight.
Measure him ere he depart
        With those who have governed and led;
Larger so much by the heart,
Larger so much by the head.
                Emperor
                Evermore.

XVII.
He holds that, consenting or dissident,
        Nations must move with the time;
Assumes that crime with a precedent
        Doubles the guilt of the crime;
—Denies that a slaver’s bond,
        Or a treaty signed by knaves
(Quorum magna pars, and beyond
Was one of an honest name),
Gives an inexpugnable claim
To abolish men into slaves.
                Emperor
                Evermore.


XVIII.
He will not swagger nor boast
        Of his country’s meeds, in a tone
Missuiting a great man most
        If such should speak of his own;
Nor will he act, on her side,
        From motives baser, indeed,
Than a man of a noble pride
        Can avow for himself at need;
Never, for lucre or laurels,
        Or custom, though such should be rife,
Adapting the smaller morals
To measure the larger life.
        He, though the merchants persuade,
And the soldiers are eager for strife,
        Finds not his country in quarrels
Only to find her in trade,—
        While still he accords her such honour
As never to flinch for her sake
        Where men put service upon her,
Found heavy to undertake
        And scarcely like to be paid:
Believing a nation may act
Unselfishly—shiver a lance
(As the least of her sons may, in fact)
        And not for a cause of finance.
                Emperor
                Evermore.


XIX.
        Great is he
Who uses his greatness for all.
His name shall stand perpetually
        As a name to applaud and cherish,
Not only within the civic wall
For the loyal, but also without
        For the generous and free.
        Just is he,
Who is just for the popular due
        As well as the private debt.
The praise of nations ready to perish
Fall on him,—crown him in view
        Of tyrants caught in the net,
And statesmen dizzy with fear and doubt!
And though, because they are many,
        And he is merely one,
And nations selfish and cruel
Heap up the inquisitor’s fuel
        To kill the body of high intents,
And burn great deeds from their place,
Till this, the greatest of any,
        May seem imperfectly done;
        Courage, whoever circumvents!
Courage, courage, whoever is base!
The soul of a high intent, be it known,
Can die no more than any soul
Which God keeps by Him under the throne;
And this, at whatever interim,
        Shall live, and be consummated
Into the being of deeds made whole.
Courage, courage! happy is he,
        Of whom (himself among the dead
And silent) this word shall be said:
—That he might have had the world with him,
        But chose to side with suffering men,
        And had the world against him when
He came to deliver Italy.
                Emperor
                Evermore.