Aleardi returned to Verona and to his books, publishing another poem
in 1856, called Le Citta Italiane Marinare e Commercianti. His next
publication was, in 1857, Rafaello e la Fornarina; then followed Un'
Ora della mia Giovinezza, Le Tre Fiume, and Le Tre Fanciulle, in 1858.
The war of 1859 broke out between Austria and France and Italy.
Aleardi spent the brief period of the campaign in a military prison at
Verona, where his sympathies were given an ounce of prevention. He had
committed no offense, but at midnight the police appeared, examined
his papers, found nothing, and bade him rise and go to prison. After
the peace of Villafranca he was liberated, and left the Austrian
states, retiring first to Brescia, and then to Florence. His
publications since 1859 have been a Canto Politico and I Sette
Soldati. He was condemned for his voluntary exile, by the Austrian
courts, and I remember reading in the newspapers the official
invitation given him to come back to Verona and be punished. But,
oddly enough, he declined to do so.
II
The first considerable work of Aleardi was Le Prime Storie (Primal
Histories), in which he traces the course of the human race through
the Scriptural story of its creation, its fall, and its destruction by
the deluge, through the Greek and Latin days, through the darkness and
glory of the feudal times, down to our own,--following it from Eden
to Babylon and Tyre, from Tyre and Babylon to Athens and Rome, from
Florence and Genoa to the shores of the New World, full of shadowy
tradition and the promise of a peaceful and happy future.
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