(Milan, January, 1848.)
Here, take these gaudy robes and put them by;
I will go dress me black as widowhood;
I have seen blood run, I have heard the cry
Of him that struck and him that vainly sued.
Henceforth no other ornament will I
But on my breast a ribbon red as blood.
And when they ask what dyed the silk so red,
I'll say, The life-blood of my brothers dead.
And when they ask how it may cleanséd be,
I'll say, O, not in river nor in sea;
Dishonor passes not in wave nor flood;
My ribbon ye must wash in German blood.
The repressed horror in the lines,
I have seen blood run, I have heard the cry
Of him that struck and him that vainly sued,
is the sentiment of a picture that presents the scene to the reader's
eye as this shuddering woman saw it; and the heart of woman's
fierceness and hate is in that fragment of drama with which the brief
poem closes. It is the history of an epoch. That epoch is now past,
however; so long and so irrevocably past, that Dall' Ongaro commented
in a note upon the poem: “The word 'German' is left as a key to the
opinions of the time. Human brotherhood has been greatly promoted
since 1848. German is now no longer synonymous with enemy. Italy has
made peace with the peoples, and is leagued with them all against
their common oppressors.”
There is still another of these songs, in which the heart of womanhood
speaks, though this time with a voice of pride and happiness.