Italy : 8. The Brothers

In the same hour the breath of life receiving,
They came together and were beautiful;
But, as they slumbered in their mother's lap,
How mournful was their beauty! She would sit,
And look and weep, andl ook and weep again;
For Nature had but half her work achieved,
Denying, like a step-dame, to the babes
Her noblest gifts; denying speech to one,
And to the other -- reason.
But at length
(Seven years gone by, seven melancholy years)
Another came, as fair and fairer still;
And then, how anxiously the mother watched
Till reason dawned and speech declared itself!
Reason and speech were his; and down she knelt,
Clasping her hands in silent ecstasy.
On the hill-side, where still their cottage stands
('Tis near the upper falls in Lauterbrounn;
For there I sheltered now, their frugal hearth
Blazing with mountain-pine when I appeared,
And there, as round they sate, I heard their story)
On the hill-side, among the cataracts,
In happy ignorance the children played;
Alike unconscious, through their cloudless day,
Of what they had and had not; every where
Gathering rock-flowers; or, with their utmost might,
Loosening the fragment from the precipice,
And, as it tumbled, listening for the plunge;
Yet, as by instinct, at the customed hour
Returning; the two eldest, step by step,
Lifting along, and with the tenderest care,
Their infant-brother.
Once the hour was past;
And, when she sought, she sought and could not find;
And when she found -- Where was the little one?
Alas, they answered not; yet still she asked,
Still in her grief forgetting.
With a scream,
Such as an Eagle sends forth when he soars,
A scream that through the woods scatters dismay,
The idiot-boy looked up into the sky,
And leaped and laughed aloud and leaped again;
As if he wished to follow, in its flight,
Something just gone, and gone from earth to heaven;
While he, whose every gesture, every look
Went to the heart, for from the heart it came,
He who nor spoke nor heard -- all things to him,
Day after day, as silent as the grave,
(To him unknown the melody of birds,
Of waters -- and the voice that should have soothed
His infant sorrows, singing him to sleep)
Fled to her mantle as for refuge there,
And, as at once o'ercome with fear and grief,
Covered his head and wept. A dreadful thought
Flashed thro' her brain. 'Has not some bird of prey,
Thirsting to dip his beak in innocent blood --
It must, it must be so!' -- And so it was.
There was an Eagle that had long acquired
Absolute sway, the lord of a domain
Savage, sublime; nor from the hills alone
Gathering large tribute, but from every vale;
Making the ewe, whene'er he deigned to stoop,
Bleat for the lamb. Great was the recompence
Assured to him who laid the tyrant low;
And near his nest, in that eventful hour,
Calmly and patiently, a hunter stood,
A hunter, as it chanced, of old renown,
And, as it chanced, their father.
In the South
A speck appeared, enlarging; and ere long,
As on his journey to the golden sun,
Upward He came, ascending through the clouds,
That, like a dark and troubled sea, obscured
The world beneath. -- 'But what is in his grasp?
Ha! 'tis a child -- and may it not be ours?
I dare not, cannot; and yet why forbear,
When, if it lives, a cruel death awaits it?
-- May He who winged the shaft when Tell stood forth,
And shot the apple from the youngling's head,
Grant me the strength, the courage!' As he spoke,
He aimed, he fired; and at his feet they fell,
The Eagle and the child -- the child unhurt --
Tho' such the grasp, not even in death relinquished.