Two Nations | Page 3

as from thy grave, From the
green fruitful grass in Maytime hot, Thy grave, where thou art not.
Gather the grass and weave, in sacred sign Of the ancient earth divine,
The holy heart of things, the seed of birth, The mystical warm earth. O
thou her flower of flowers, with treble braid Be thy sweet head arrayed,
In witness of her mighty motherhood Who bore thee and found thee
good, Her fairest-born of children, on whose head Her green and white
and red Are hope and light and life, inviolate Of any latter fate. Fly, O
our flag, through deep Italian air, Above the flags that were, The dusty
shreds of shameful battle-flags Trampled and rent in rags, As withering
woods in autumn's bitterest breath Yellow, and black as death; Black as
crushed worms that sicken in the sense, And yellow as pestilence. Fly,
green as summer and red as dawn and white As the live heart of light,
The blind bright womb of colour unborn, that brings Forth all fair
forms of things, As freedom all fair forms of nations dyed In
divers-coloured pride. Fly fleet as wind on every wind that blows
Between her seas and snows, From Alpine white, from Tuscan green,

and where Vesuvius reddens air. Fly! and let all men see it, and all
kings wail, And priests wax faint and pale, And the cold hordes that
moan in misty places And the funereal races And the sick serfs of lands
that wait and wane See thee and hate thee in vain. In the clear laughter
of all winds and waves, In the blown grass of graves, In the long sound
of fluctuant boughs of trees, In the broad breath of seas, Bid the sound
of thy flying folds be heard; And as a spoken word Full of that fair god
and that merciless Who rends the Pythoness, So be the sound and so the
fire that saith She feels her ancient breath And the old blood move in
her immortal veins.
§ Strange travail and strong pains, Our mother, hast thou borne these
many years While thy pure blood and tears Mixed with the Tyrrhene
and the Adrian sea; Light things were said of thee, As of one buried
deep among the dead; Yea, she hath been, they said, She was when
time was younger, and is not; The very cerecloths rot That flutter in the
dusty wind of death, Not moving with her breath; Far seasons and
forgotten years enfold Her dead corpse old and cold With many windy
winters and pale springs: She is none of this world's things. Though her
dead head like a live garland wear The golden-growing hair That flows
over her breast down to her feet, Dead queens, whose life was sweet In
sight of all men living, have been found So cold, so clad, so crowned,
With all things faded and with one thing fair, Their old immortal hair,
When flesh and bone turned dust at touch of day: And she is dead as
they. So men said sadly, mocking; so the slave, Whose life was his
soul's grave; So, pale or red with change of fast and feast, The
sanguine-sandalled priest; So the Austrian, when his fortune came to
flood, And the warm wave was blood; With wings that widened and
with beak that smote, So shrieked through either throat From the hot
horror of its northern nest That double-headed pest; So, triple-crowned
with fear and fraud and shame, He of whom treason came, The
herdsman of the Gadarean swine; So all his ravening kine, Made fat
with poisonous pasture; so not we, Mother, beholding thee. Make
answer, O the crown of all our slain, Ye that were one, being twain,
Twain brethren, twin-born to the second birth, Chosen out of all our
earth To be the prophesying stars that say How hard is night on day,
Stars in serene and sudden heaven rerisen Before the sun break prison
And ere the moon be wasted; fair first flowers In that red wreath of

ours Woven with the lives of all whose lives were shed To crown their
mother's head With leaves of civic cypress and thick yew, Till the olive
bind it too, Olive and laurel and all loftier leaves That victory wears or
weaves At her fair feet for her beloved brow; Hear, for she too hears
now, O Pisacane, from Calabrian sands; O all heroic hands Close on
the sword-hilt, hands of all her dead; O many a holy head, Bowed for
her sake even to her reddening dust; O chosen, O pure and just, Who
counted for a small thing life's estate, And died, and made it great; Ye
whose names mix with all her memories; ye Who rather chose to see
Death, than