A Croat was seen carrying a babe
transfixed upon his bayonet. All know of those women's hands and ears
found in the haversacks of the prisoners; of those twelve unhappy men
burnt alive at Porta Tosa; of those nineteen buried in a lime-pit at
the Castello, whose scorched bodies we found. I myself, ordered with a
detachment, after the departure of the enemy, to examine the Castello
and neighborhood, was horror-struck at the sight of a babe nailed to a
post."
THE LOMBARD WOMAN.
(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 cleansed 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.
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