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:
THE LAND OF THE DEAD.
'Mongst us phantoms of Italians,--
Mummies even from our birth,--
The very babies' nurses
Help to put them under earth.
'T is a waste of holy water
When we're taken to the font:
They that make us pay for burial
Swindle us to that amount.
In appearance we're constructed
Much like Adam's other sons,--
Seem of flesh and blood, but really
We are nothing but dry bones.
O deluded apparitions,
What do _you_ do among men?
Be resigned to fate, and vanish
Back into the past again!
Ah! of a perished people
What boots now the brilliant story?
Why should skeletons be bothering
About liberty and glory?
Why deck this funeral service
With such pomp of torch and flower?
Let us, without more palaver,
Growl this requiem, of ours.
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