Chapter IV

Over the broad expanses
Of garlanded Lombardy,
Where the gentle vines are swinging
In the orchards from tree to tree;

Through Padua from Verona,
From the sculptured gothic town,
Carved from ruin upon ruin,
And ancienter than renown;

Through Padua from Verona
To fair Venice, where she stands
With her feet on subject waters,
Lady of many lands;

From Venice by sea to Ancona;
From Ancona to the west;
Climbing many a gardened hillside
And many a castled crest;

Through valleys dim with the twilight
Of their gray olive trees;
Over plains that swim with harvests
Like golden noonday seas;

Whence the lofty campanili
Like the masts of ships arise,
And like a fleet at anchor
Under them, the village lies;

To Florence beside her Arno,
In her many-marbled pride,
Crowned with infamy and glory
By the sons she has denied;

To pitiless Pisa, where never
Since the anguish of Ugolin
The moon in the Tower of Famine[3]
Fate so dread as his hath seen;

Out through the gates of Pisa
To Livorno on her bay,
To Genoa and to Naples
The comrades hold their way,

Past the Guelph in his town beleaguered,
Past the fortressed Ghibelline,
Through lands that reek with slaughter,
Treason, and shame, and sin;

By desert, by sea, by city,
High hill-cope and temple-dome,
Through pestilence, hunger, and horror,
Upon the road to Rome;

While every land behind them
Forgets them as they go,
And in Mantua they are remembered
As is the last year's snow;

But the Marchioness goes to her chamber
Day after day to weep,--
For the changeless heart of a mother
The love of a son must keep.

The Marchioness weeps in her chamber
Over tidings that come to her
Of the exiles she seeks, by letter
And by lips of messenger,

Broken hints of their sojourn and absence,
Comfortless, vague, and slight,--
Like feathers wafted backwards
From passage birds in flight.[4]

The tale of a drunken sailor,
In whose ship they went to sea;
A traveller's evening story
At a village hostelry,

Of certain comrades sent him
By our Lady, of her grace,
To save his life from robbers
In a lonely desert place;

Word from the monks of a convent
Of gentle comrades that lay
One stormy night at their convent,
And passed with the storm at day;

The long parley of a peasant
That sold them wine and food,
The gossip of a shepherd
That guided them through a wood;

A boatman's talk at the ferry
Of a river where they crossed,
And as if they had sunk in the current
All trace of them was lost;

And so is an end of tidings
But never an end of tears,
Of secret and friendless sorrow
Through blank and silent years.