The Star has published a poem of Garibaldi's, " Garibaldi's
Answer to Victor Hugo, transmitted and done into English by an Oxford Graduate." It shows decisively that Garibaldi has no common command of poetical rhetoric, some of which (as translated by the Oxford graduate at least) is exceedingly keen and brilliant. Take this, for instance, in apology for accepting Victor Emanuel after dethroning Bombe :—
" To spare the Italy we loved this strain Of the old agony borne all again,
We drove the Bourbon out and took that other,—
Dethroned a corpse, and set up its sick brother !"
The poem is long, full of not so much the enthusiasm as the fanaticism of humanity, and entirely in Garibaldi's finest Shelleyan strain. There is one of his noble magnanimous touches in it,— we mean the italicized words on Louis Napoleon-
" Warned off from Mexico—foiled at Berlin—
He slew my lads—my Roman boys ! to win Prestige.' He won it. Ah ! good Friend! thy verse Thunders the judgment of a righteous curse On those soiled laurel leaves. But let him be, He does the things he must! Wait thou and see !
A little while his shameless scheme prevails, A little while, and God'a long-suffering fails.
And when he ends, and we ma,, pity him,
The dawn will break on Europe dead and dim ; The dawn of brotherhood, and love, and peace, The light of a new time, when there shall cease This clang of armies over Christian lands ; And nations, tearing off their Lazarus-bands, Shall rise,—see face to face,—and sadly say,
' Wily were we foes? why did we serve—and slay?"
Can anything resemble more closely in tone the spirit of Shelley's Hellas ending with,—
"Oh cease! must hate and death return? Cease ! must mon kill and die? Cease! drain not to the dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past, Oh might it die or rest at last !"
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