You will go into Italy; you have here
Your passport and your letters of exchange;
You travel as a count, it would appear,
Going for pleasure and a little change;
Once there, you play the rodomont, the queer
Crack-brain good fellow, idle gamester, strange
Spendthrift and madcap. Give yourself full swing;
People are taken with that kind of thing.
When you behold--and it will happen so--
The birds flock down about the net, be wary;
Talk from a warm and open heart, and show
Yourself with everybody bold and merry.
The North's a dungeon, say, a waste of snow,
The very house and home of January,
Compared with that fair garden of the earth,
Beautiful, free, and full of life and mirth.
And throwing in your discourse this word _free_,
Just to fill up, and as by accident,
Look round among your listeners, and see
If it has had at all the effect you meant;
Beat a retreat if it fails, carelessly
Talking of this and that; but in the event
Some one is taken with it, never fear,
Push boldly forward, for the road is clear.
Be bold and shrewd; and do not be too quick,
As some are, and plunge headlong on your prey
When, if the snare shall happen not to stick,
Your uproar frightens all the rest away;
To take your hare by carriage is the trick;
Make a wide circle, do not mind delay;
Experiment and work in silence; scheme
With that wise prudence that shall folly seem.
The minister bids the emissary, “Turn me into a jest; say I'm
sleepy and begin to dote; invent what lies you will, I give you
_carte-bianche_.”
Of governments down yonder say this, too,
At the cafés and theaters; indeed
For this, I've made a little sign for you
Upon your passport that the wise will read
For an express command to let you do
Whatever you think best, and take no heed.
Then the emissary is instructed to make himself center of the party of
extremes, and in different companies to pity the country, to laugh at
moderate progress as a sham, and to say that the concessions of
the local governments are merely _ruses_ to pacify and delude the
people,--as in great part they were, though Giusti and his party did
not believe so. The instructions to the emissary conclude with the
charge to
Scatter republican ideas, and say
That all the rich and all the well-to-do
Use common people hardly better, nay,
Worse, than their dogs; and add some hard words, too:
Declare that _bread_'s the question of the day,
And that the communists alone are true;
And that the foes of the agrarian cause
Waste more than half of all by wicked laws.
Then, he tells him, when the storm begins to blow, and the pockets of
the people feel its effect, and the mob grows hungry, to contrive that
there shall be some sort of outbreak, with a bit of pillage,--
So that the kings down there, pushed to the wall,
For congresses and bayonets shall call.
If you should have occasion to spend, spend,
The money won't be wasted; there must be
Policemen in retirement, spies without end,
Shameless and penniless; buy, you are free.
If destiny should be so much your friend
That you could shake a throne or two for me,
Pour me out treasures. I shall be content;
My gains will be at least seven cent, per cent.
Or, in the event the inconstant goddess frown,
Let me know instantly when you are caught;
A thunderbolt shall burst upon your crown,
And you become a martyr on the spot.
As minister I turn all upside down,
Our government disowns you as it ought.
And so the cake is turned upon the fire,
And we can use you next as we desire.
In order not to awaken any fear
In the post-office, 't is my plan that you
Shall always correspond with liberals here;
Don't doubt but I shall hear of all you do.
...'s a Republican known far and near;
I haven't another spy that's _half_ as true!
You understand, and I need say no more;
Lucky for you if you get me up a war!
We get the flavor of this, at least the literary flavor, the satire,
and the irony, but it inevitably falls somewhat cold upon us, because
it had its origin in a condition of things which, though historical,
are so opposed to all our own experience that they are hard to be
imagined. Yet we can fancy the effect such a poem must have had, at
the time when it was written, upon a people who felt in the midst of
their aspirations some disturbing element from without, and believed
this to be espionage and Austrian interference. If the poem had also
to be passed about secretly from one hand to another, its enjoyment
must have been still keener; but strip it of all these costly and
melancholy advantages, and it is still a piece of subtle and polished
satire.
Most of Giusti's poems, however, are written in moods and manners very
different from this; there is sparkle and dash in the movement, as
well as the thought, which I cannot reproduce, and in giving another
poem I can only hope to show something of his varying manner.
Some foreigner, Lamartine, I think, called Italy the Land of the
Dead,--whereupon Giusti responded with a poem of that title, addressed
to his friend Gino Capponi: