" I found my way
In palaces, in hovels; tranquil, I
Both great and lowly did make drunk with rage.
I knew the art to call forth cruel tears
In every eye, to wake in every heart
A love of slaughter, a ferocious need
Of blood. And in a thousand strong right hands
Glitter the arms I gave.
In the last act occurs one of those lyrical passages in which
Niccolini excels, and two lines from this chorus are among the most
famous in modern Italian poetry:
Perche tanto sorriso del cielo
Sulla terra del vile dolor?
The scene is in a public place in Palermo, and the time is the moment
before the massacre of the French begins. A chorus of Sicilian poets
remind the people of their sorrows and degradation, and sing:
The wind vexes the forest no longer,
In the sunshine the leaflets expand:
With barrenness cursed be the land
That is bathed with the sweat of the slave!
On the fields now the harvests are waving,
On the fields that our blood has made red;
Harvests grown for our enemy's bread
From the bones of our children they wave!
With a veil of black clouds would the tempest
Might the face of this Italy cover;
Why should Heaven smile so glorious over
The land of our infamous woe?
All nature is suddenly wakened,
Here in slumbers unending man sleeps;
Dust trod evermore by the steps
Of ever-strange lords he lies low!
[Illustration: Giambattista Niccolini.
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