In trance and dream of old, God's prophet saw <br />The casting down of thrones. Thou, watching lone <br />The hot Sardinian coast-line, hazy-hilled, <br />Where, fringing round Caprera's rocky zone <br />With foam, the slow waves gather and withdraw, <br />Behold'st the vision of the seer fulfilled, <br />And hear'st the sea-winds burdened with a sound <br />Of falling chains, as, one by one, unbound, <br />The nations lift their right hands up and swear <br />Their oath of freedom. From the chalk-white wall <br />Of England, from the black Carpathian range, <br />Along the Danube and the Theiss, through all <br />The passes of the Spanish Pyrenees, <br />And from the Seine's thronged banks, a murmur strange <br />And glad floats to thee o'er thy summer seas <br />On the salt wind that stirs thy whitening hair,-- <br />The song of freedom's bloodless victories! <br />Rejoice, O Garibaldi! Though thy sword <br />Failed at Rome's gates, and blood seemed vainly poured <br />Where, in Christ's name, the crowned infidel <br />Of France wrought murder with the arms of hell <br />On that sad mountain slope whose ghostly dead, <br />Unmindful of the gray exorcist's ban, <br />Walk, unappeased, the chambered Vatican, <br />And draw the curtains of Napoleon's bed! <br />God's providence is not blind, but, full of eyes, <br />It searches all the refuges of lies; <br />And in His time and way, the accursed things <br />Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage <br />Has clashed defiance from hot youth to age <br />Shall perish. All men shall be priests and kings, <br />One royal brotherhood, one church made free <br />By love, which is the law of liberty<br /><br />John Greenleaf Whittier<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/garibaldi/
