<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342063" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Siena</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Inside this northern summer's fold<br>The fields are full of naked gold,<br>Broadcast from heaven on lands it loves;<br>The green veiled air is full of doves;<br>Soft leaves that sift the sunbeams let<br>Light on the small warm grasses wet<br>Fall in short broken kisses sweet,<br>And break again like waves that beat<br>Round the sun's feet.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But I, for all this English mirth<br>Of golden-shod and dancing days,<br>And the old green-girt sweet-hearted earth,<br>Desire what here no spells can raise.<br>Far hence, with holier heavens above,<br>The lovely city of my love<br>Bathes deep in the sun-satiate air<br>That flows round no fair thing more fair<br>Her beauty bare.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There the utter sky is holier, there<br>More pure the intense white height of air,<br>More clear men's eyes that mine would meet,<br>And the sweet springs of things more sweet.<br>There for this one warm note of doves<br>A clamour of a thousand loves<br>Storms the night's ear, the day's assails,<br>From the tempestuous nightingales,<br>And fills, and fails.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O gracious city well-beloved,<br> Italian, and a maiden crowned,<br>Siena, my feet are no more moved<br> Toward thy strange-shapen mountain-bound:<br>But my heart in me turns and moves,<br>O lady loveliest of my loves,<br>Toward thee, to lie before thy feet<br>And gaze from thy fair fountain-seat<br>Up the sheer street;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the house midway hanging see<br>That saw Saint Catherine bodily,<br>Felt on its floors her sweet feet move,<br>And the live light of fiery love<br>Burn from her beautiful strange face,<br>As in the sanguine sacred place<br>Where in pure hands she took the head<br>Severed, and with pure lips still red<br>Kissed the lips dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For years through, sweetest of the saints,<br> In quiet without cease she wrought,<br>Till cries of men and fierce complaints<br> From outward moved her maiden thought;<br>And prayers she heard and sighs toward France,<br>&quot;God, send us back deliverance,<br>Send back thy servant, lest we die!&quot;<br>With an exceeding bitter cry<br>They smote the sky.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then in her sacred saving hands<br>She took the sorrows of the lands,<br>With maiden palms she lifted up<br>The sick time's blood-embittered cup,<br>And in her virgin garment furled<br>The faint limbs of a wounded world.<br>Clothed with calm love and clear desire,<br>She went forth in her soul's attire,<br>A missive fire.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Across the might of men that strove<br> It shone, and over heads of kings;<br>And molten in red flames of love<br> Were swords and many monstrous things;<br>And shields were lowered, and snapt were spears,<br>And sweeter-tuned the clamorous years;<br>And faith came back, and peace, that were<br>Fled; for she bade, saying, &quot;Thou, God's heir,<br>Hast thou no care?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;Lo, men lay waste thine heritage<br>Still, and much heathen people rage<br>Against thee, and devise vain things.<br>What comfort in the face of kings,<br>What counsel is there? Turn thine eyes<br>And thine heart from them in like wise;<br>Turn thee unto thine holy place<br>To help us that of God for grace<br>Require thy face.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;For who shall hear us if not thou<br> In a strange land? what doest thou there?<br>Thy sheep are spoiled, and the ploughers plough<br> Upon us; why hast thou no care<br>For all this, and beyond strange hills<br>Liest unregardful what snow chills<br>Thy foldless flock, or what rains beat?<br>Lo, in thine ears, before thy feet,<br>Thy lost sheep bleat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;And strange men feed on faultless lives,<br>And there is blood, and men put knives,<br>Shepherd, unto the young lamb's throat;<br>And one hath eaten, and one smote,<br>And one had hunger and is fed<br>Full of the flesh of these, and red<br>With blood of these as who drinks wine<br>And God knoweth, who hath sent thee a sign,<br>If these were thine.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the Pope's heart within him burned,<br> So that he rose up, seeing the sign,<br>And came among them; but she turned<br> Back to her daily way divine,<br>And fed her faith with silent things,<br>And lived her life with curbed white wings,<br>And mixed herself with heaven and died:<br>And now on the sheer city-side<br>Smiles like a bride.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You see her in the fresh clear gloom,<br>Where walls shut out the flame and bloom<br>Of full-breathed summer, and the roof<br>Keeps the keen ardent air aloof<br>And sweet weight of the violent sky:<br>There bodily beheld on high,<br>She seems as one hearing in tune<br>Heaven within heaven, at heaven's full noon,<br>In sacred swoon:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A solemn swoon of sense that aches<br> With imminent blind heat of heaven,<br>While all the wide-eyed spirit wakes,<br> Vigilant of the supreme Seven,<br>Whose choral flames in God's sight move,<br>Made unendurable with love,<br>That without wind or blast of breath<br>Compels all things through life and death<br>Whither God saith.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There on the dim side-chapel wall<br>Thy mighty touch memorial,<br>Razzi, raised up, for ages dead,<br>And fixed for us her heavenly head:<br>And, rent with plaited thorn and rod,<br>Bared the live likeness of her God<br>To men's eyes turning from strange lands,<br>Where, pale from thine immortal hands,<br>Christ wounded stands;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the blood blots his holy hair<br> And white brows over hungering eyes<br>That plead against us, and the fair<br> Mute lips forlorn of words or sighs<br>In the great torment that bends down<br>His bruised head with the bloomless crown,<br>White as the unfruitful thorn-flower,<br>A God beheld in dreams that were<br>Beheld of her.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In vain on all these sins and years<br>Falls the sad blood, fall the slow tears;<br>In vain poured forth as watersprings,<br>Priests, on your altars, and ye, kings,<br>About your seats of sanguine gold;<br>Still your God, spat upon and sold,<br>Bleeds at your hands; but now is gone<br>All his flock from him saving one;<br>Judas alone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Surely your race it was that he,<br> O men signed backward with his name,<br>Beholding in Gethsemane<br> Bled the red bitter sweat of shame,<br>Knowing how the word of Christian should<br>Mean to men evil and not good,<br>Seem to men shameful for your sake,<br>Whose lips, for all the prayers they make,<br>Man's blood must slake.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But blood nor tears ye love not, you<br>That my love leads my longing to,<br>Fair as the world's old faith of flowers,<br>O golden goddesses of ours!<br>From what Idalian rose-pleasance<br>Hath Aphrodite bidden glance<br>The lovelier lightnings of your feet?<br>From what sweet Paphian sward or seat<br>Led you more sweet?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O white three sisters, three as one,<br> With flowerlike arms for flowery bands<br>Your linked limbs glitter like the sun,<br> And time lies beaten at your hands.<br>Time and wild years and wars and men<br>Pass, and ye care not whence or when;<br>With calm lips over sweet for scorn,<br>Ye watch night pass, O children born<br>Of the old-world morn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, in this strange and shrineless place,<br>What doth a goddess, what a Grace,<br>Where no Greek worships her shrined limbs<br>With wreaths and Cytherean hymns?<br>Where no lute makes luxurious<br>The adoring airs in Amathus,<br>Till the maid, knowing her mother near,<br>Sobs with love, aching with sweet fear?<br>What do ye here?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the outer land is sad, and wears<br> A raiment of a flaming fire;<br>And the fierce fruitless mountain stairs<br> Climb, yet seem wroth and loth to aspire,<br>Climb, and break, and are broken down,<br>And through their clefts and crests the town<br>Looks west and sees the dead sun lie,<br>In sanguine death that stains the sky<br>With angry dye.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And from the war-worn wastes without<br>In twilight, in the time of doubt,<br>One sound comes of one whisper, where<br>Moved with low motions of slow air<br>The great trees nigh the castle swing<br>In the sad coloured evening;<br>&quot;Ricorditi di me, che son<br>La Pia&quot;--that small sweet word alone<br>Is not yet gone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;Ricorditi di me&quot;--the sound<br> Sole out of deep dumb days remote<br>Across the fiery and fatal ground<br> Comes tender as a hurt bird's note<br>To where, a ghost with empty hands,<br>A woe-worn ghost, her palace stands<br>In the mid city, where the strong<br>Bells turn the sunset air to song,<br>And the towers throng.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With other face, with speech the same,<br>A mightier maiden's likeness came<br>Late among mourning men that slept,<br>A sacred ghost that went and wept,<br>White as the passion-wounded Lamb,<br>Saying, &quot;Ah, remember me, that am<br>Italia.&quot; (From deep sea to sea<br>Earth heard, earth knew her, that this was she.)<br>&quot;Ricorditi.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;Love made me of all things fairest thing,<br> And Hate unmade me; this knows he<br>Who with God's sacerdotal ring<br> Enringed mine hand, espousing me.&quot;<br>Yea, in thy myriad-mooded woe,<br>Yea, Mother, hast thou not said so?<br>Have not our hearts within us stirred,<br>O thou most holiest, at thy word?<br>Have we not heard?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As this dead tragic land that she<br>Found deadly, such was time to thee;<br>Years passed thee withering in the red<br>Maremma, years that deemed thee dead,<br>Ages that sorrowed or that scorned;<br>And all this while though all they mourned<br>Thou sawest the end of things unclean,<br>And the unborn that should see thee a queen.<br>Have we not seen?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The weary poet, thy sad son,<br> Upon thy soil, under thy skies,<br>Saw all Italian things save one -<br> Italia; this thing missed his eyes;<br>The old mother-might, the breast, the face,<br>That reared, that lit the Roman race;<br>This not Leopardi saw; but we,<br>What is it, Mother, that we see,<br>What if not thee?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Look thou from Siena southward home,<br>Where the priest's pall hangs rent on Rome,<br>And through the red rent swaddling-bands<br>Towards thine she strains her labouring hands.<br>Look thou and listen, and let be<br>All the dead quick, all the bond free;<br>In the blind eyes let there be sight;<br>In the eighteen centuries of the night<br>Let there be light.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bow down the beauty of thine head,<br> Sweet, and with lips of living breath<br>Kiss thy sons sleeping and thy dead,<br> That there be no more sleep or death.<br>Give us thy light, thy might, thy love,<br>Whom thy face seen afar above<br>Drew to thy feet; and when, being free,<br>Thou hast blest thy children born to thee,<br>Bless also me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Me that when others played or slept<br>Sat still under thy cross and wept;<br>Me who so early and unaware<br>Felt fall on bent bared brows and hair<br>(Thin drops of the overflowing flood!)<br>The bitter blessing of thy blood;<br>The sacred shadow of thy pain,<br>Thine, the true maiden-mother, slain<br>And raised again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Me consecrated, if I might,<br> To praise thee, or to love at least,<br>O mother of all men's dear delight,<br> Thou madest a choral-souled boy-priest,<br>Before my lips had leave to sing,<br>Or my hands hardly strength to cling<br>About the intolerable tree<br>Whereto they had nailed my heart and thee<br>And said, &quot;Let be.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For to thee too the high Fates gave<br>Grace to be sacrificed and save,<br>That being arisen, in the equal sun,<br>God and the People should be one;<br>By those red roads thy footprints trod,<br>Man more divine, more human God,<br>Saviour; that where no light was known<br>But darkness, and a daytime flown,<br>Light should be shown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let there be light, O Italy!<br> For our feet falter in the night.<br>O lamp of living years to be,<br> O light of God, let there be light!<br>Fill with a love keener than flame<br>Men sealed in spirit with thy name,<br>The cities and the Roman skies,<br>Where men with other than man's eyes<br>Saw thy sun rise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For theirs thou wast and thine were they<br>Whose names outshine thy very day;<br>For they are thine and theirs thou art<br>Whose blood beats living in man's heart,<br>Remembering ages fled and dead<br>Wherein for thy sake these men bled;<br>They that saw Trebia, they that see<br>Mentana, they in years to be<br>That shall see thee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For thine are all of us, and ours<br> Thou; till the seasons bring to birth<br>A perfect people, and all the powers<br> Be with them that bear fruit on earth;<br>Till the inner heart of man be one<br>With freedom, and the sovereign sun;<br>And Time, in likeness of a guide,<br>Lead the Republic as a bride<br>Up to God's side.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Algernon+Charles+Swinburne">Algernon Charles Swinburne</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342063" data-title="Siena de Algernon Charles Swinburne" data-description="Inside this northern summer's fold The fields are full of naked gold, Broadcast from heaven on lands it loves; The green veiled air is full of doves; Soft leaves that sift the sunbeams let Light on the small warm grasses wet Fall in short broken k..."></div> </div> </div>

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